Publication: Special Economic Zones : Progress, Emerging Challenges, and Future Directions
Date
2011-08-01
ISSN
Published
2011-08-01
Author(s)
Abstract
Ask three people to describe a special
economic zone (SEZ) and three very different images may
emerge. The first person may describe a fenced-in industrial
estate in a developing country, populated by footloose
multinational corporations (MNCs) enjoying tax breaks, with
laborers in garment factories working in substandard
conditions. In contrast, the second person may recount the
'miracle of Shenzhen,' a fishing village
transformed into a cosmopolitan city of 14 million, with per
capita gross domestic product (GDP) growing 100-fold, in the
30 years since it was designated as an SEZ. A third person
may think about places like Dubai or Singapore, whose ports
serve as the basis for wide range of trade- and
logistics-oriented activities. In this book, the author use
SEZ as a generic expression to describe the broad range of
modern economic zones discussed in this book. But we are
most concerned with two specific forms of those zones: (1)
the export processing zones (EPZs) or free zones, which
focus on manufacturing for export; and (2) the large-scale
SEZs, which usually combine residential and multiuse
commercial and industrial activity. The former represents a
traditional model used widely throughout the developing
world for almost four decades. The latter represents a more
recent form of economic zone, originating in the 1980s in
China and gaining in popularity in recent years. Although
these models need not be mutually exclusive (many SEZs
include EPZ industrial parks within them), they are
sufficiently different in their objectives, investment
requirements, and approach to require a distinction in this book.
Citation
“Farole, Thomas; Akinci, Gokhan. 2011. Special Economic Zones : Progress,
Emerging Challenges, and Future Directions. Directions in Development ; trade. © World Bank. http://openknowledge.worldbank.org/entities/publication/49cdd96b-37e1-50f0-ac30-7328b9f5a1f1 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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