Infrastructure Facilities in Special Economic Zones: A Comparative Study of Government and Private SEZs in Gujarat

Abstract

Infrastructure is the key factor for industrialization as well as the economic development of any country in the world. In late 20th century, many developing countries of the world especially east Asian countries including China have started SEZ policy through which world class infrastructure facilities were built to attract the investors from all over the world. This certainly encourage investment, technology transfer, increase exports and employment in the country. In order to know the infrastructure facilities in India and specially in Gujarat, primary data collected from the 145 units of 7 SEZs out of 676 units of total 20 SEZs located in Gujarat to study the infrastructure facilities available in government and private SEZs. Since collected data were not normally distributed or relatively small in size, Mann Whitney U test was applied to test the hypothesis. The main outcome of this research reflected that out of four major infrastructure facilities, three of them have difference of opinion among the unit holders of SEZs of Gujarat. This also implies that private sector SEZs provide better infrastructure facilities compare to government SEZ (KASEZ) in Gujarat. So far as social infrastructure like housing, school, health and other such basic social amenities are concern, both type of SEZs have similar opinion. This category of infrastructure also ranks lowest compare to physical, service and pool infrastructure facilities in the SEZs.