Centre to develop plastic parks

The Centre, in a bid to help the Indian plastic industry increase economies of scale to take on the US, China and other countries, plans to set up plastic clusters or parks across the country.

Initially, the Centre proposes to develop such parks — which will be on the lines of existing automobile, textile and food processing parks — in Maharashtra and Gujarat. Each park, with about 200 plastic units, entails an investment of around Rs 200 crore.

The chemicals and fertilisers ministry will soon approach the Planning Commission and the finance ministry with a proposal to provide various fiscal incentives for the development of such parks. The sops include tax holidays, exemption in sales tax, octroi, excise, as well as subsidy.

However, Minister of State for Chemicals and Fertilisers Srikant Jena told Business Standard on Saturday these incentives would be finalised only after the ministry receives approval from the Planning Commission, as well as the finance ministry.

Jena said the development of plastic clusters or parks would help increase exports of the Indian plastic industry, from $3 billion (over Rs 14,000 crore) — a small size compared with China’s $22 billion (over Rs 1 lakh crore).

“The plastic industry should make all efforts to increase exports to $6 billion in 2010-11. It should go in for more value-added products instead of being restricted to raw materials,” the minister said on the sidelines of an export award function of the Plastics Export Promotion Council.

Each park is to be developed on 100-150 acres and is expected to house over 100 plastic units with a monthly production capacity of 200 tonnes. In a feasibility study, the government-promoted Plastics Export Promotion Council has called for a customised package for units to be set up in the proposed plastic parks.

Such customised packages are offered by Malaysia in the plastic park at Kertih, which is spread across 2,000 hectares, the council’s executive director, Rajan Kalyanpur, said.

“Each unit will employ 25 people. These parks may be developed in upcoming or existing special economic zones or at new sites. They will have common facilities for research and development, effluent treatment and waste management,” he added.

Three PCPIRs too
Meanwhile, Neelkumar Darbari, joint secretary in the Department of Chemicals and Petrochemicals, said the Centre was actively pursuing the development of three Petroleum, Chemicals and Petrochemicals Investment Regions (PCPIRs), of 250 sq km each in size, in Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal.

The proposed PCPIRs entail an investment of Rs 13,000 crore over the next 10 years. Nearly 20 per cent of finance will be available through viability gap funding for the upcoming PCPIRs.