The Centre may come out with amendments to Special Economic Zones (SEZ) Rules 2006 to synchronise it with Goods and Services Tax (GST) laws by the end of this month, a top official said today. “We have been working for a few months on the amendment of SEZ Rules, 2006 to synchronise it with the GST laws, this is under active consideration of the government. “With due consultation process with Department of Revenue… this fairly elaborate amendments of the rules is likely to come out now by the end of this month, it is almost at the final stage and we shall be issuing it,” said Bidyut Behari Swain, additional secretary in the Ministry of Commerce at an Assocham conference here.
He also informed that the commerce ministry has created a group of eminent persons to develop a road-map for future of SEZs to have a very fresh look at it and come up with ideas which could be important in the policy making process. “This group is deliberating today for the second time in this month itself, we really put a lot of hope on this and we feel that the ideas they come up with eventually in another one month or so would really helpful for us in the policy making process,” said Swain.
While the Department of Commerce consistently looks at facilitating ease of doing business by removing bottlenecks wherever they exist, it was observed that there is a possibility of different authorities handling administrative and financial matters being at slight variance with each other.
“We have taken up a project in which we would like to have a very clear set of guidelines regarding how administrative and financial matters by the authorities are carried out and we are hopeful that we will come out with a report in two months which should be implemented in three months,” Swain said.
Source : Financial Express