Rajat Bhargava expresses confidence to bring a vibrant PCPIR policy to attract investments in the country

Amaravati: AP senior bureaucrat Rajat Bhargava will prepare a new draft policy to attract investments into the Petroleum, Chemicals and Petrochemical Investment Regions (PCPIR) in the country.

The union government has constituted a high level committee headed by Rajat Bhargava, Principal Secretary, Industries department, government of AP to submit a report on policy initiatives to be taken up in the PCPIRs in the country.

PGS Rao, Director, Economic Division, department of Chemicals and Petrochemicals, Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers has directed Rajat Bhargava to deliberate the issues with the stakeholders and submit the report within 15 days.

The high level panel has the responsibility to suggest necessary policy initiatives for attracting more investments into the Petroleum, Chemicals and Petrochemical Investment Regions (PCPIR) in the country.

Speaking to The Hans India, Bhargava expressed confidence on bringing a vibrant policy for the country. He said that, "We have to prepare PCPIR draft policy within 15 days. Basically there must be a vibrant policy to attract investments easily. It should have infrastructure component. There must be experts to develop the industry. We have to create permanent structure.

Viability of the projects must be ensured. It is difficult to bring all the extent of 300 kms to 400 kms corridors into the policy in a single phase, so focussed policy would better help in reaping benefits in a short span of time. Then we could extend it. We should look into the different modals. Make it viable and implement fast."

It is worth to add here that, on Tuesday, a high-level meeting under Union Chemicals and Petrochemicals Secretary P Raghavendra Rao in Delhi discussed the proposed amendments to the PCPIR Policy. It was put in place in 2007. This meeting, it decided to constitute the Committee including Rajat Bhargava as chairman, principal secretaries of industries of states including Tamil Nadu, Odisha and Gujarat along with the Industry Associations as members.

This is the first time the Centre is seeking to amend the PCPIR Policy after it was introduced. For over a year now, the central government had been mulling new policy interventions to attract investments into the PCPIRs by addressing various issues.

At a recent summit held in Mumbai, on global chemicals and petrochemicals manufacturing hubs, the issue was discussed and accordingly, the Centre has now set up the high-level committee to come up with necessary suggestions for rejuvenating the PCPIRs, the official added.

Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy also discussed at length the issue of setting up of Petrochemical Corridor in the State, in the recent visit of Dharmendra Debendra Pradhan, Minister of Petroleum & Natural Gas to AP.

The Centre, as per the PCPIR Policy, 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.

Barring Dahej, the other PCPIRs have not actually taken off as envisaged over the years. After it remained in cold storage for over six years, the Andhra Pradesh government has now revived the Visakhapatnam- Kakinada PCPIR to attract an investment of over Rs 2 lakh crore under Master Plan-2031.

The VK-PCPIR is the largest in the country spread over an area of 640 sq km along the Bay of Bengal coast. Two big projects have now been lined up as anchor tenants for the PCPIR in Kakinada with an aggregate investment of over 15.72 billion USD.

Haldia Petro Chemicals would set up a refinery in the Kakinada Special Economic Zone with an investment of 11.43 billion USD to serve as the anchor unit with supply of required feedstock.

HPCL, in a joint venture with GAIL, would set up a greenfield refinery, a 1.5 million metric tonne per annum petrochemical complex, in Kakinada with an investment of 4.29 billion USD.