Petrochemicals Secy. Sinha says national policy to be announced soon

10 Jun '05

3 min read

The Government is proposing various measures to enhance the competitiveness of the petrochemical and plastic processing industry through a National Policy on Petrochemicals, which is at an advanced stage of finalisation. This was indicated by Mr Pratyush Sinha, Secretary, Department of Chemicals & Petrochemicals, at a CEOs Roundtable, organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), here today.

According to Mr Sinha, one of the major initiatives would be the “Petrochemcal Technology Upgradation Fund, which will cater to technological upgradation of the plastic processing industry and R&D initiatives in core areas.”

Mr Sinha's speech, which was read out in absentia by Mr Mukesh Kakkar, Joint Secretary in the department, mentioned that the Asia Pacific region was the fastest growing region in the global chemical industry. “By 2010, Asia will be one of the major markets for chemicals in the world. About 40% of the world's chemical manufacturing capacity is likely to be based in Asia, and the impact of such capacity expansions in the Asian region might displace US exports to Asia,” he prophesised.

Mr Sinha predicted that India had the advantage on the R&D front due to its inherent strength in the process chemistry and availability of technical and scientific manpower. “It is therefore possible that multinational companies in developed countries look to India for outsourcing their research requirements,” he said.

The Secretary however mentioned in his speech that the present R&D spending by Indian companies was very low, at less than 1% against the world average of 5%. “In view of the challenges posed by change in patent regime, our industry needs to upgrade their research facilities and increase their R&D expenditure to atleast international levels.”

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