Data Methodology
SEZ Explorer is a structured research catalogue of 8,709 zone records across 100 countries. Catalogue breadth is separate from field-level source coverage, currency, and legal applicability.
Catalogue Scope and Programme Taxonomy v1.0
Establish legal or official designation: A record needs an identified government, regulator, or delegated zone-authority basis. A marketing name or the word “zone” is not enough. Resolve the investable identity: Aliases and translated names for one jurisdiction count once. An umbrella programme, its constituent areas, and individual sites are related records only when each is a distinct research object. Assign the programme family: The official programme determines the primary type. Similar English labels do not collapse national SEZs, development zones, free-trade programmes, high-tech zones, and customs-supervised areas into one class. Classify operating status separately: Approval, notification, designation, construction, and operation are different facts. Legal existence never automatically proves that a zone is open for investors.
China: One distinct jurisdiction in the narrow national special-zone cohort
The narrow cohort is programme-based, not a search for every Chinese place translated as a special economic zone. It contains the original national SEZ jurisdictions and the two Xinjiang special economic development programmes. Included: Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Shantou, Xiamen, Hainan, Kashgar, and Khorgos/Horgos — seven distinct jurisdictions in taxonomy v1.0. Kept separate: National Economic and Technological Development Zones (NETDZ/ETDZ), Pilot Free Trade Zones and their areas, High-Tech Industrial Development Zones (HIDZ), comprehensive bonded zones, and other customs-supervised areas remain in the broader China catalogue under their own programme family. Status: A national designation establishes programme identity. Current, forthcoming, unknown, or inactive status still requires separate operating evidence for the relevant jurisdiction and period. Reproduction: Start with the five jurisdictions identified in the national account of the 1980–1988 SEZ programme. Add Kashgar and Khorgos/Horgos once each from the central policy for the two Xinjiang special economic development zones. Normalise spelling and translated aliases to the same official jurisdiction. Keep ETDZ, Pilot FTZ, HIDZ, and bonded/customs programmes out of this narrow cohort; count them only in their own family.
India: One legally notified SEZ; operation is a separate subset
The national SEZ cohort starts from the Department of Commerce notified list, not the larger formal-approval total and not every technology or industrial park in the country catalogue. Included: SEZs on the official notified register, including the separately identified pre-SEZ Act government and private-sector zones used in the national fact sheet. Kept separate: Formal and in-principle approvals that have not been notified are forthcoming candidates rather than notified SEZs. NIMZs, technology parks, industrial parks, and other programmes stay in their own catalogue types unless they also have a traceable SEZ notification. Status: Notified does not mean operational. A notified SEZ is marked operational only when it appears in the same-period official operational list or has equivalent current authority evidence. De-notified or withdrawn zones are inactive or retired rather than silently deleted. Reproduction: Download the official notified and operational lists with the closest available reporting dates. Normalise developer, location, state, and notification identifiers; do not join on a shortened marketing name alone. Use the notified register as the legal cohort and the operational register as a subset of that cohort. Record partial de-notifications at the applicable area or amendment level, and keep full de-notifications outside the current cohort.
United States: One Foreign-Trade Zones Board project number
The national comparison unit is the FTZ project administered by its grantee. A project can contain several magnet, usage-driven, or subzone sites without becoming several headline zones. Included: FTZ Board-authorised zone projects, keyed by official zone number and grantee, with sites retained as nested operating geography where that detail is available. Kept separate: Magnet sites, usage-driven sites, subzones, and individual production operations are not added to the national project count. They may be analysed as facilities, but they are not peer zone projects. Status: Board approval or site designation alone does not prove activity. Active status follows the latest FTZ Board annual report or current OFIS evidence; otherwise the record remains designated with status unknown or forthcoming. Reproduction: Take the official OFIS zone-project list and key each record by zone number. Keep the grantee as the administrator and model sites or subzones beneath that project rather than as extra national headline rows. Use the latest annual report to identify which zone projects were active during the reporting year. Do not substitute the number of active production operations for the number of active FTZ projects.
The Six Dimensions
Regulatory Quality (business licensing, foreign ownership rules, customs procedures, dispute resolution), Infrastructure (connectivity, power, water, logistics links), Economic Performance (GDP contribution, employment, export revenue, historical FDI), Operational Efficiency (processing times, administrative burden, one-stop-shop quality), Ecosystem Depth (anchor tenants, sector clustering, supply chains, support services), and Track Record (zone age, stability, verified tenant case studies).
AI Enrichment Pipeline
AI-assisted discovery and extraction can propose candidate observations. Eligible public values require the applicable evidence and resolution policy; estimates, benchmarks, country proxies, conflicts, and unknowns remain distinguishable.
Primary Data Sources
The workflow may use government registers, gazette notices, authority publications, multilateral research, and other identified documents. A source category does not prove coverage for a particular field; inspect its disclosure when available.