SEEPZ
Santacruz Electronics Export Processing Zone is a Special Economic Zone in Mumbai, India. Situated in the Andheri East area, it is subjected to liberal economic laws as compared to the rest of India to promote rapid economic growth using tax and business incentives and attract foreign investment and technology. Seepz was created in 1973 and was seen as export processing zone. Since then many other SEZ's have been created in rest of India. SEEPZ mainly houses electronic hardware manufacturing companies, software companies, and jewelry exporters of India. More than 40 percent of India's total jewelry exports out of $5,210.69 million during year 2006-2007 came from units within SEEPZ.
Profile
There are more than 400 units inside SEEPZ.The Policing is done by the Ministry of Finance's Customs branch and the Custodian of SEEPZ is MMTC LTD. ~ Ministry of Commerce unit.
These include Fine Jewellery Mfg Ltd., Portescap India Pvt. Ltd., CGI Group Inc., Elegant Collection, Tata Consultancy Services, Syntel, Zycus, ACE Software, Inter Gold, Tara Jewels Limited, Shanker Jewels, Lumina Datamatics Limited, Indus Valley Partners to name a few.
Most buildings in the zone are built to look the same from outside; they're called Standard Design Factories. Others are made by architects to the taste of the owners.
SEEPZ is a high security entry zone. Employees of all companies need to have permanent SEEPZ gate pass to gain entry inside SEEPZ.
Visitors, need special permits to enter. Due to these hassles government proposed making SEEPZ a Free Trade Zone in 1999. However, gate pass and visitor pass rules continue till date. Making SEEPZ a FTZ meant that it would be treated as outside the customs zone of India. This meant no excise or customs duty will ever be levied on raw materials, companies would have to sell their products/services overseas to earn back precious foreign exchange for the country that was spent in importing those goods using hard currency.