Budget 2022: SEZ 2.0 to revive activities, says Commerce secy Subhramanyam

The government is in the process of drafting a new legislation for the next chapter for special economic zones that will see more participation of state governments in creation of manufacturing hubs in the country, commerce secretary BVR Subhramanyam said on Wednesday.

The Centre will take states on board and will cooperate with them to enable them to become partners in creation of New Development of Enterprise and Service Hubs (DESH) or SEZ 2.0.

“We would like states to bring their estates also on to this so that when you have single-window clearance, it is single window clearance for both central and state-level clearances, we may even think of putting the states on the approval bodies either at the state level or regional limit. That’s the direction in which we are thinking. It’s a work in progress. But I’m sure that this newest season will lead to a huge revival of activity in SEZ in areas they will be manufacturing both for the international market as well as for the domestic market,” Subhramanyam told reporters.

“What India needs is large industrial manufacturing zones, which have high-quality world-class infrastructure, digitally enabled and highly competitive in terms of whatever services it provides. These places will become the manufacturing hubs and we will recast the SEZ Act in the next couple of months as the finance minister said set to actually bring this system into place,” he said.

Subramanyam also said that the Union Cabinet has already approved the interest equalisation and the modified version of the scheme will be soon notified.

“The interest equalization scheme has been approved by the cabinet. It's mentioned in the Budget. We will be notifying it very soon,” Subramanyam said.