The 59th meeting of Board of Approval (BoA) on Special Economic Zones (SEZs) and 4th meeting of 2013 series on Export Oriented Units (EOUs) were held in Delhi recently under the chairmanship of Commerce Secretary SR Rao. This was the first meeting of the Inter-ministerial body to be held after the recent SEZ reforms amendments carried out to the SEZ Rules, 2006 on August 12, 2013.    

The total SEZ exports upto June 30, 2013 were Rs 1,13,299 crore and the investment stood at Rs.2,60,252 crore and over 11.35 lakh persons were employed in this sector. The BoA considered four new proposals for establishing SEZ (including one on multi-product, two sector specific SEZs for IT/ITES and one engineering SEZ) with a total investment of Rs. 6,451.31 crore.    

Of these, two proposals were cleared while the other two were deferred for the next meeting pending certain clarifications. The BoA also approved the conversion of the 624.786 Hectare Mangalore SEZ, Mangalore from a sector specific SEZ to a Multi Product SEZ.    

This change would enable the SEZ to invite units to be set up in a variety of sectors after this was made possible on account of the recent amendments to the SEZ Rules following the April 18, 2013 SEZ Reforms announcement by the Commerce and Industry Minister Shri Anand Sharma.