 "Surjit Kumar Chaudhary, secretary, Department of Chemicals and Petrochemicals")
In a move that could benefit the chemical manufacturers in India, public sector undertakings (PSUs) involve in hydrocarbon refining and cracking have agreed to allocate 20 percent of output of their upcoming naphtha cracker for downstream industry. The chemical producers in India have been raising the issue of the shortage of feedstock, a key raw material derived from the crackers, as a key challenge for the growth of the industry. The government also believes that the move would help achieve the objective of Make in India initiative.
“Chemical industry is a key enabler for other industries. As chemicals are consumed in varying proportion by every industry - rightly from electronics to paints, from pharmaceuticals to cosmetics - without chemicals, development of other sectors are not possible. Hence, there is an in principal agreement that 20 per cent of the future naphtha cracker output should be made available for the downstream chemical industry for derivative manufacturing. With respect to existing crackers, companies have been urged to look at how they can create additional supplies to the downstream industries,” said Surjit Kumar Chaudhary, secretary of the Department of Chemicals and Petrochemicals (DCPC), at CII’s conference on specialty chemicals in Mumbai on September 16, 2015.
India’s share in export of global chemicals is less than 2 per cent. As per some statistics, the domestic manufacturing of finished goods has grown by 4 per cent in the last three years, while the imports have grown by over 20 per cent for the same period. This has raised alarms among the industry and the policy makers. Also, while India has been to make good progress in terms of end-user products (such as plastic products, coatings, etc) or formulations (ie, medicines, agrochemicals, etc), domestic manufacturers have to import largest quality of raw materials required to make these products. A case in point in pharmaceuticals industry; while India is known as a leading manufacturer of formulations, the industry has to depend on imports of ingredients & intermediates from China. Hence, the government aims to change this situation.
“For sustainable development of the chemical sector my department seeks to create an enabling framework to accelerate manufacturing of chemicals and petrochemicals, in order to meet the growing internal and external demands, particularly, reducing dependence on imports,” said Chaudhary the Secretary. The 16-point plan is aimed at increasing the annual growth rate of the chemicals sector to 15 per cent and boosting its contribution to the overall national economy.
Surjit Kumar Chaudhary also launched a background paper on the specialty chemicals industry and a survey that will form the basis of CII’s 2015 report on key feedstock for specialty chemicals.
