Mumbai: The board of approval (BoA) has cleared 31 SEZ proposals, including that of South Korean steel giant Posco to set up a mega special economic zone in Orissa with an investment of Rs53,000 crore. With this, the number of SEZs approved so far has gone up to 181, an official release said.

The board, which gave in-principle nod to 12 other proposals along with Posco's, also gave final approval to 18 other proposals.

Posco has proposed to set up a multi-product SEZ in Jagatsinghpur district of Orissa. The SEZ would be spread over an area of 1,601 hectares. State government representatives, however, confirmed that the SEZs would come up either on waste land, barren land or single crop land.

The current SEZ list also includes Essar group's project at Hazira in Gujarat. The SEZ would be dedicated to engineering products and would be spread over an area of 247.5 hectares.

The BoA also cleared Zydus's 48.83 hectare pharma SEZ in Ahmedabad and four IT SEZs at its fifth meeting. The board will hold three more meetings over the next ten days to clear pending applications.