“The government is seized of major issues concerning special economic zones (SEZs),” Union Minister of State for Industry and Commerce Nirmala Sitharaman has said, and asked entrepreneurs to be competitive and produce for the market according to the demand with a horse sense.
The Union Minister, who laid the foundation for an IT tower in Visakhapatnam SEZ on Saturday, said the government was carrying out an analysis for correction to make meaningful and optimum utilisation of the SEZs.
The IT tower to be constructed under the ASIDE scheme of the Ministry of Commerce will come up on 2.5 acres of land with 1.09 lakh sft of built-up area.
The purpose for which the SEZ was established was to attract Rs. 3 lakh crore of investments and provide jobs to 1.27 million people. But for various reasons, the SEZ had lost out the advantages for 10 to 15 years.
Ms. Sitharaman said the Finance Minister was seized of the demand to scrap minimum alternate tax (MAT) and Dividend Distribution Tax (DDT). The government was also going into issues like self-certification to give the ease of doing business, giving headroom to ECGC for export credit guarantee, and also issues relating to project export.
The Prime Minister was scheduled to visit the U.S. and issues like totalisation agreement, under which IT experts were losing health insurance paid because they could not stay for 10 years owing to visa problems, and labour transfer under Mode IV would also be addressed, she said.
Visakhapatnam MP K. Haribabu wanted all the districts in the State to be brought under the Joint Director General of Foreign Trade in Visakhapatnam.
VSEZ Development Commissioner S. Kishore said 30,000 sft of the new tower would be earmarked for common data recovery and one floor for plug-and-play facilities.
