Govt mulls setting up new petrochemical complexes: Ananth Kumar

Government is looking into possibilities of setting up new petrochemical complexes near the 16 petroleum refineries in the country, Fertiliser Minister Ananth Kumar said. The petrochemical industry is a sunrise industry having a size of Rs 6 lakh crore and there is a huge potential to raise its capacity substantially, Kumar said. "...we should milk the crude as much as we can. So we are looking into the possibilities that petrochemical complexes can come near the 16 refineries in the country. We are evaluating all the options," Kumar said. Under the Petroleum, Chemicals and Petrochemical Investment Regions (PCPIR) policy, the government had approved the setting up of four PCPIRs such as Vishakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, Dahej in Gujarat, Paradeep in Odisha and Cuddalore in Tamil Nadu.

The Minister was speaking at the National Awards for Technology Innovation in Petrochemical and Downstream Plastics Processing Industry, organised by the Central Institute of Plastic Engineering and Technology (CIPET). He said the country needs more value addition of the refinery output so that the polymer industry grows up fast, and creates new products and does import substitution. Emphasising on the plastic sector, Kumar said after information-technology and biotechnology the new buzz word in the country should be plastic technology.

He said the government will provide full support to the petrochemical industry. In this regard, he added that a lot of work has been done on reverse SEZs with some countries.