SEZ AND THE PROBLEMS

The Special Economic Zone popularly known as SEZ was perhaps one of the media for



a] improvement of infrastructure

b] generation of direct employment



based on the above Government extends certain fringe benefits and tax holiday to companies who set their operations up at these zones The way this works was probably different than the perspective with which this was annonced.

We find lots of IT and ITES corporates boarding into this laudable zones. If one swims deeper astonishingly it would be found that these IT & ITES Corporates - who can afford an establisment in this otherwise expensive zones with its frills - are predominantly or perhaps the only stakeholders here. Are we achieving what we want in getting these corporates into SEZ - a question which needs to be pondered. The cash rich companies in these sectors will get further more incentives and holidays -which would have been more beneficial to manufacturing kind of set up where besides improving the infrastructure will also create lots of direct employment opportunities in and arouund the area better than the white collar jobs offered by the these sectors

Also think of those software companies who have an existing client base but cannot shift out of STPI to SEZ what is the fate of these companies if the STPI soaps are withdrawn do we then vote for continuance of STPI concurrently with SEZ probably with a difference in the degree of incentives provided