: The Centre is talking to several domestic and foreign companies including Haldia Petrochemicals and ExxonMobil, for setting up an 'anchor' unit in the proposed petroleum, chemicals and petrochemical investment region in Andhra Pradesh, a top official of the Department of Petrochemicals said on Friday.
Union chemicals and petrochemicals secretary P Raghavendra Rao said the government was talking to companies including Haldia Petrochemicals, ExxonMobil for the PCPIR region planned between Kakinada and Vishakapatnam in the state.
The Centre as per the PCPIR Policy in 2009 approved four PCPIRs at Dahej (Gujarat) on the west coast and Visakhapatnam-Kakinada (Andhra Pradesh), Paradeep (Odisha) and Cuddalore-Nagapattinam (Tamil Nadu) on the east coast.
However, apart from the PCPIR in Dahej, the other PCPIRs were yet to take off as envisaged.
Each PCPIR would have a refinery or a petrochemical feedstock company as an 'anchor' tenant while the infrastructure would be built and managed by a developer.
The external linkages like road connectivity would be provided by the Centre and respective State governments.
More From This Section
At a press conference, Rao said to sort out the viability gap funding issue for the project, the Centre was holding discussions with the state government and hoped there would be a positive development on the project in three years.
"It is not that nothing has been done. The main problem of Kakinada-Visakhapatnam PCPIR is the anchor tenant... Due to various reasons, (there are) anchor tenant issue and viability gap funding issuesWe are talking to several private players.
They may not necessarily be Indian (company for anchor)", he said.
"Haldia is showing interest. ExxonMobil is (also) showing lot of interest and there are several others," he said.
Kakinada-Vishakapatnam PCPIR when envisaged in 2009 was expected to attract investments of Rs 3.43 lakh crore then besides creating 12 lakh jobs of which 5.25 lakh direct and 6. 75 lakh indirect, a senior state government official had earlier said.
Rao said the country is currently importing about Rs three lakh crore while exports stand at Rs two lakh crore thus remaining a net importer of Rs one lakh crore worth of chemicals.
To a query, he said India imports a lot of chemicals including Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (API) from the Coronavirus-hit China and the government is engaged with the industry on a regular basis on the supply situation there.
According to him, the contribution of chemicals and petrochemicals to the country's GDP in 2018 was about USD 65 billion and the target is to reach USD 200 billion by 2024-25.
The department was also working on an action plan to achieve it, he said.