Surplus lands in the Special Economic Zones to be de-notified

The Commerce Ministry will set in motion this month the process of denotification of surplus land in Special Economic Zones to put them to productive use commerce secretary B V R Subramanyam said.

For Special Economic Zones, as these zones account for 30 per cent of India's total exports, some simplification is required for them, and by the end of August, "we will be doing a couple of things" for SEZs.

Denotification of an idle space, an area looked into

"There is a lot of space in SEZ which is free. We are going to ease up the process for denotification of that land. As long as you use that land for industrial purposes, we will allow SEZs land to be hived off," he said. Another area which is being looked upon by the ministry includes denotification of an idle space.

If a company has a building for IT sector and half the building is used and remaining is vacant, "how do you de-notify that half building from being an SEZ", he said adding, "We have 10 crore sq feet of space idle in built up accommodation in SEZ across the country. If we can actually de-notify that space, you can bring that 10 crore sq feet into play for any kind of use. We will probably be able to do that very soon".

The commerce secretary was addressing a meeting got up by the Confederation of Indian Industry in the National capital on august 12th

He said 150 districts in the country will be identified for export growth. They will be funded well to develop quality export infrastructure and these districts will be encouraged to compete with each other under the scheme called district as an export hub

A substantial amount of money would be put in these districts, which would be anywhere between Rs 50-100 crore for one district. "We also intend to set up a market intelligence network...We are going to launch a brand India campaign later in the year," he said.

 Export targets have been given to 140 Indian embassies and 60 consulates

Export targets have been given to 140 Indian embassies and 60 consulates and they would help in providing informati denotification of an idle space.on like export opportunities in their countries. For the market intelligence network, a Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN) kind of set up will be developed where exporters would get real time information.

On the new foreign trade policy (FTP), the secretary said that it will have a lot of new features and probably few new schemes for promoting exports such as districts as an Export hub scheme. "By the end of August, we will have a new Foreign Trade Policy ready," he said.

We will monitor our performance on hard numbers