According to Development Commissioner Ravi Saxena, the credit for this goes to the state's land acquisition policy, in which unlike in other states, the government has no role in acquisition of land for private SEZs. As the SEZ developers are themselves permitted to engage in bargaining with the landowners or the farmers, it leaves little space for corruption or cheating.

"As landowners directly bargain with the developers, they get better prices," he says, adding that this policy leaves no room for any kind of complaint or anger against anybody.

“In several cases, farmers with their land falling within some SEZs are reported to have waited for land prices to rise very high before selling them off. But the government did not interfere and left it to the farmers and the SEZ developers to deal with the situation. This ultimately benefited both the farmers and the SEZ developers," he adds.

Terming this as an "enlightened" land acquisition policy, Saxena says that many of the states have been asked by the Centre to follow the Gujarat SEZ system to avoid confrontations.

Of the total SEZ land in the state, 45 per cent is wasteland, 43 per cent agricultural land acquired from the farmers and the remaining 12 per cent has been acquired by the Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation (GIDC) much before the birth of the SEZ Act, but later transferred to SEZs.

According to Saxena, investment worth Rs 34,599.44 crore has already been made in Gujarat's SEZs with a total direct and indirect employment of 15,088 persons. However, the amount of FDI coming to Gujarat's SEZ is yet not known even though some of the countries like Japan have expressed willingness to invest in the state.

According to him, Kandla SEZ, which has 170 operational units, has exported goods worth Rs 1534 crore till February 13 of the current financial year, 34 per cent over the previous year's export. Surat's multi-product SEZ has exported goods worth Rs 6,500 crore so far during 2007-08 against Rs 5500 crores of export during 2006-07, he says.

Saxena, who is currently on deputation in the Ministry of Commerce and Industry and looks after Kandla Special Economic Zone (SEZ), told mediapersons that exports from the functioning SEZs in the country had risen by 92.85 per cent in 2007-08 and was expected to rise by 100 per cent in 2008-09.