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Puducherry awaits Central nod for acquiring more land

— Photo: T. Singaravelou

SEEKING MORE UNITS: Industries and Power Minister V. Vaithilingam addressing the CII regional council meeting in Puducherry on Saturday.

PUDUCHERRY: The territorial administration is awaiting clearance from the Union Ministry of Home Affairs to acquire an additional 26 acres of land for setting up the Special Economic Zone at Karasur, Minister for Industries and Power V. Vaithilingam said here on Saturday.

“More than 95 per cent of the land needed for establishing the SEZ has been acquired,” he told members of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) at their regional council meeting. He also expressed the hope that the territorial government would get the Ministry’s approval shortly.

In the next stage, the government would approach the Union Ministry of Commerce for its approval to notify the SEZ, he said, adding that the entire process would be completed before the end of 2008.

Mr. Vaithilingam appealed to the members of CII to come forward to establish power generating units in the Union Territory. Though the power situation is manageable, on certain occasions when there was a crisis in the Central grid, the territory faced power shortage, he said.

Delivering a lecture on SEZs in the country, the Director-General of Export Promotion Council, Union Ministry of Commerce, Lalit B. Singhal, said export earnings through SEZ had achieved 92 per cent growth during 2007-08 . Revenue through export of goods manufactured at the SEZs during 2007-08 was Rs.66, 638 crore when compared to 2006-07 figure of Rs. 4,787 crore, he said.

For the current financial year, the government expected the exports from SEZ to go up to Rs. 1, 25,950 crore, Mr. Singhal said. The SEZ’s had attracted a total investment of Rs. 69, 350 crore and provided employment to 3, 36,235 people during the last two years, Mr. Singhal said.

A total of 89 SEZ’s had been approved by the Union government with States such as Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Gujarat garnering a good number of them, he said.

Addressing a press conference at the end of the council meeting, the Chairman of CII-Southern Region, B.V.R. Reddy, said they were in the process of preparing “Vision 2025” report for Puducherry. A task force of CII was in the process of consulting members of political parties and other stakeholders for preparing the document, he said. On the CII’s initiatives as part of the sill development programme, he said they had already adopted 50 ITIs and another 42 would be adopted during the current year for upgrading the institutes.

The Chairman of CII, Puducherry State Council, Sriram Subramanya, said they would assist the territorial administration in establishing an international business school in Puducherry. “The government has in principal agreed to our demand for establishing the school. A joint team comprising members of the CII and representatives of territorial administration would soon hold a consultation,” he said.

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