ICC is playing a key role in educating chemical industry on the
ramifications of REACH. It is coordinating actively with the
Government of India to facilitate information dissemination and
ensure compliance from side of the industry. Help desks are being
set up all across the country especially in chemical industry
dominated areas including Gujarat. A think tank has been formed
and ICC is playing a pivotal role in coordinating activities including
GLP. Agencies like SGS Ltd. and Jay Research Foundation are
being roped in serving these efforts.

The CWC program of ICC has been most successfully implemented
in Gujarat. A number of seminars have been held over the past 3
years to educate industry on ramifications of CWC as well as inform
them of the different categories falling under the CWC. ICC has been
extremely active in getting its members to comply and has worked
closely with Government of India to facilitate this. As part of these
efforts a major function will be held in Baroda in December 2007 to
inform the industry on audit procedures and the specific compliance
issues where a wide participation from national and international is
expected.

ICC is at the forefront of encouraging its members to comply and has
proactively introduced the Responsible Care Program, which has
now got GSFC, GACL, Alembic and Heubach Colour Pvt. Ltd.
desiring to receive the logo . Companies such as Tata Chemicals,
United Phosphorous Ltd., Bihar Caustic & Chemicals, SRF Ltd. ,
Rohm & Haas Pvt. Ltd., S.I Group India Ltd., SRF Ltd. and Supreme
Petrochem Ltd. have already received it. ICC Gujarat launched
Responsible Care Program on 22nd December 2006 and is already in
the process of auditing a large public sector unit in the state and
number of other companies has signed up for the audit in the near
future. 'The Best Responsible Care Committed Company Award'
has been instituted and is considered by its members to be most
prestigious award to be attained. ICC regularly holds seminar for waste reduction, energy conservation, and clean management considers the environmental issues as top of their agenda.

The country’s exports of chemical goods are far too small as
compared to its size and potential. Infrastructure bottlenecks, lack
of global size, inadequate concentration on R&D, all contribute to
this low level of exports. There is an upward movement and one of
the key contributions for the future could well be the SEZ program of
the Government along with the PCPIR (Petroleum, Chemical &
Petrochemicals Investment Region). This would create a huge
amount of activity with a cluster growth of specific chemistry
oriented industries located in an infrastructure, which stimulates
growth and takes away the bottlenecks and irritants. Needless to
say that there still exists bottlenecks of infrastructure like roads,
power, R&D facilities, analytical laboratories which still needs to be
addressed and areas of huge concern is the shortage of manpower
and urgent need of recognizing and forecasting the need of Industry
in the next 20 years. Here we run the risk of having missed the boat
and urgently need to make up by providing high quality educational
institutions at affordable prices to churn out millions of people
required for the growth which is already occurring and continues to
occur provided, it is fueled by the most important ingredient and
unique strength of industry (skilled and educated manpower). This
advantage cannot be allowed to be fritted away.

Foreign players setting base in India do post some threat to the local industry. However, the benefits far outweigh the risks. India no longer should and needs to protect its local industry, which in any case needs to compete globally. In fact, foreign players can push the local industry to become more efficient and optimize its
operations. In the end it still would be a case of efficient, global
sized companies being successful rather than foreign or Indian .