Union Commerce Secretary G K Pillai, on Monday, said the investment in Special Economic Zones (SEZs) across the country is likely to cross the Rs 1,00,000 crore mark by 2008.

Addressing a one-day national seminar on SEZ here, he said apart from the benefits of investment, the SEZs would generate about one lakh jobs in various fields by this year.

“The Commerce Ministry is expecting another three lakh crore investment in Special Economic Zones by the end of 2009, which would generate three lakh more jobs,” he said.

Centre’s vision
On SEZ Act, which brought enormous FDI, Mr Pillai said the government’s vision on Special Economic Zones had tremendous potential to succeed.

 “Nokia, Flextronics, Ascendas, Foxconn Tech and Apache Software have already invested in India because of the Special Economic Zones,” he said.

Mr Pillai, who is also the Chairman of the Board of Approval (BoA) for Special Economic Zone, said the SEZs were fairly distributed across the country, except for some places in Bihar and North Eastern states.

“Private investment in Special Economic Zones, before the enactment of the Act, was merely Rs 3,600 crore,” he said adding “after the Act, many companies have so far invested over Rs 40,000 crore besides generating 50,000 jobs”.

Instructions
On the land acquisition issue especially for the SEZ, Mr Pillai said the Centre had issued certain instructions with regard to approval of Special Economic Zones and the land acquisition for SEZs.

“Chief Secretaries of all the state governments have been informed that the state governments should acquire land for SEZs only with 100 per cent consent from the land owners,” he said. According to the statistics given by the officials on the latest state-wise Special Economic Zones  position in India, Maharastra leads the table with 60 SEZs, formally approved by the Centre, followed by Tamil Nadu with 36, Harayana (22), Karnataka (20), Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh (19), West Bengal (10), Orissa (8) and Uttar Pradesh (6).

Freight corridor
Meanwhile, Mr Pillai said, India and Japan will next month sign an agreement for a dedicated rail freight corridor connecting Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata, which will significantly reduce the time taken for transporting goods from one metro to another.

“We are likely to sign it (MoU) next month when the Japanese Prime Minister visits India,” Mr Pillai told reporters on the sidelines of the seminar here.

He said about 200 freight trains would ply on the corridor and help Indian Railways wean away goods traffic from the roads.