The next six months may see the Centre notifying 100 special economic zones.
"We will go past the figure of 100... in the next six months, there will be more than 200 notified zones," said a commerce ministry official.
A total of 99 zones have been notified to date out of which 19 are functional. The empowered group of ministers had put a freeze on fresh SEZ notifications and proposals in January this year. The freeze was lifted on April 5.
Till January 15, only 63 zones had been notified.
Notification is given to a formally approved zone (which has land in its possession) after a five-stage screening. As the developers queue up to complete the notification procedures, Reliance Industries Ltd plans to make a presentation to the commerce ministry urging it to reconsider the 5,000-hectares cap on a zone.
"They will be making a presentation within the next few weeks. But under the present circumstances, it is unlikely that the upper limit on the land area can be relaxed," said an official.
The limit has adversely affected Reliance Industries' plan to set up two 10,000 hectare multi-product zones at Jhajjar in Haryana and near Panvel in Maharashtra.
According to the estimates of the commerce ministry, 63 zones notified till January 15, 2007, would generate exports worth Rs 21,931.94 crore (Rs 219.32 billion) in the year 2007-08.
In addition, the ministry expects nearly 16 lakh (1.6 million) jobs to be created when the 63 notified are fully functional and an additional 4 million jobs, when the 234 formally approved zones are fully functional.
"Currently, 25,000 people have been employed in the notified zones. In some zones, nearly 2,000 people have been employed within a month after notification," the official said.
