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Falta EPZ may lease out jetty to Century Plywood

Mohan Padmanabhan

KOLKATA, July 3

THE Falta Export Processing Zone (FEPZ) will soon finalise a long-term lease arrangement with Century Plywood for use of the highly under-utilised jetty at the zone. The various terms and conditions of the lease arrangement are expected to be tied up by end July.

Talking to Business Line here, Mr D. Chakraborti, Development Commissioner in-charge of FEPZ, confirmed this and said the search for a suitable private sector party who could utilise the jetty fully was now nearly over. Century is cited as a steady impor ter, who may benefit through a captive jetty facility.

The jetty has remained grossly underutilised by the existing units at the zone, mainly because of the anchorage problem at Diamond Harbour, he said.

FEPZ now has 55 units in operation, and the net addition to the number of units by the end of the current financial year is expected to be at least seven.

Asked on the delay in notifying FEPZ as a free trade zone (FTZ) by the Union Government, he said this was mainly due to the request by the zone authorities to the Ministry that such a notification may be issued only after the major problems faced by the zone are removed.

He said the zone lacked facilities such as mechanised-loading, and also needed certain infrastructural improvements, particularly with regard to entry/exits. He attributed the absence of sunrise units at the zone -- such as IT-enabled and software servic es, gems & jewellery, etc -- to problems of outsourcing.

He also admitted that there was a need to come out of the traditional product focus (a combination of engineering and components units) at Falta.

On the turnover front, the Development Commissioner said a target of Rs 625 crore had been fixed for FEPZ for 2001-2002, and the first quarter (April-June) had already yielded a turnover of Rs 195 crore against the Rs 75 crore recorded for the same perio d last fiscal. For the whole of 2000-2001, FEPZ recorded a turnover of Rs 519 crore as against the Rs 272 crore in the previous year.

All the seven EPZs in the country together posted a turnover of Rs 8,030 crore in 2000-2001, with SEEPZ leading the pack at Rs 5,200 crore. The Noida EPZ came a distant second at Rs 1,034 crore, followed by MEPZ at Chennai (Rs 720 crore), Kandla (Rs 550 crore), FEPZ (Rs 519 crore), Cochin (Rs 210 crore) and Visakhapatnam (Rs 182 crore).

The combined turnover target for all the zones in the current fiscal is placed at Rs 10,120 crore, with SEEPZ (Rs 6,000 crore), Noida (Rs 1,250 crore), MEPZ (Rs 800 crore), Kandla (Rs 650 crore), FEPZ (Rs 620 crore), Kochi (Rs 400 crore) and Vizag (Rs 40 0 crore).