The Hindu : Business : New law on SEZs shortly

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Mar 11, 2005

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Business

New law on SEZs shortly

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, MARCH 10. The new law on Special Economic Zones (SEZs) will soon be presented before Parliament. Disclosing this here today, the Union Commerce and Industry Minister, Kamal Nath, said this was part of the Government's focus on improving the investment climate through a series of legal measures.

Inaugurating the India Trade and Investment Forum on "Resurgent India: its challenges and opportunities'' here today, he said the Indian economy was among the fastest growing in the world with an average GDP growth of 7 per cent in the last ten years.

The forum has been organised jointly by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), the Commonwealth Business Council (CBC) and the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion.

Mr. Kamal Nath said the 16-point action programme for investment endorsed in the 2002 Commonwealth heads of government meeting already laid down principles for governments and businesses to promote investment among member states.

These related to fostering conducive business environments by governments and better corporate governance by companies. His ministry, he said, would be happy to explore possibilities for expanding these facilities by hosting or promoting further such conferences and fora through special programmes being conducted to foster trade and investment links in emerging markets.

He underlined the importance of the collective Commonwealth voice in multilateral trade bodies such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO) as the Commonwealth accounted for 40 per cent of the WTO membership. He felt that greater cooperation on trade policy issues through the Commonwealth Forum could speed up the process of the Doha Development Agenda.

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