Govt nod for RIL, Wipro SEZ

The government on Monday gave the green signal for a clutch of special economic zones (SEZs), including Reliance Industries Ltd’s (RIL’s) petrochemicals zone at Jamnagar, IT major Wipro’s six SEZ projects in five cities, Biocon’s biotech SEZ at Bangalore and Serum Instititute’s pharmaceutical (vaccines) zone at Pune. The development of these zones, each of which will house a large number of manufacturing/service units, will entail an investment of over Rs 15,000 crore.

The zones would create over 67,000 jobs in the next two years, said a senior commerce department official. Currently, SEZs employ around 95,000 people.

RIL would invest Rs 8,000 crore to develop the zone and make available the building block (naphtha), a refinery output, to scores of downstream petrochemical units that will come up in the zone. A naphtha cracker project would also be part of the project.

Wipro’s six SEZ projects are set to come up in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Chennai and Gurgoan. The company will develop each project with investments exceeding Rs 200 crore.