E-Paper
RIL's Haryana SEZ watered down
It's decided. The original concept of a 25,000-acre set of two Special Economic Zones (SEZ) proposed by Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) in Haryana four years ago has been amended, with watered-down features.
It's decided. The original concept of a 25,000-acre set of two Special Economic Zones (SEZ) proposed by Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) in Haryana four years ago has been amended, with watered-down features.
Reliance's request for a change in the concept of the project following its failure to aggregate sufficient land in Gurgaon and Jhajjar, and due to the impact of the economic slowdown, has been approved by the Haryana Investment Promotion Board.
The company has said it was feeling a serious impact of the economic environment while executing the proposed project. "Even though exports were showing recovery, no fresh capacities were being created, as a result of which the SEZ flavour, though attractive, was not sufficient to invite large investments," said a Reliance communiqué.
As per the revised proposal, Reliance Haryana SEZ Ltd (RHSL), a joint venture of RIL and the Haryana State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corporation, will now set up a Model Economic Township (MET) at Jhajjar, instead of the earlier planned SEZ of 12,500 acres in the district.
The MET, which will be broadly on the lines of an industrial model township (IMT), is likely to have Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Service Ltd (IL&FS) as co-developer. It will comprise a logistics hub, a power plant, SEZ, knowledge city, domestic tariff areas (DTA).
In Gurgaon, RHSL now plans to set up a multi-sector specific SEZ on 1,501 acres, in place of the earlier proposed multi-services SEZ on 1,086 acres. Room has also been made to rope in a strategic investor on initial subscription of RHSL equity.
RHSL claims to have invested about Rs 3,000 crore over the past four years in the two 12,500-acre SEZ projects.
