Govt plans single window clearance for industries in PCPIRs

Government is looking to amend petrochemical investment region policy to provide single window clearance for all the statutory approvals required by the industry.
As per the policy, the PCPIR (Petroleum, Chemicals and Petrochemicals Investment Region) would be a specifically delineated investment region with an area of around 250 sq km planned for the establishment of manufacturing facilities for domestic and export led production in petroleum, chemicals and petrochemicals.
"After an experience of seven years and since we have faced certain issues in the implementation of PCPIR policy we have proposed an amendment and revision of the policy," the Department of Chemicals and Petrochemicals said in a report of a Parliamentary Standing committee.

"The first major issue which we have taken up for the easy implementation of PCPIR is that there should be a single window clearance for all the statutory clearances required by any industry," the report said.
The second issue is that there are many states that cannot afford to have an area of 250 sq kms, as prescribed in the policy at present, it added.
"Therefore on a case-to-case basis, the discretion should be left to the government to reduce it to a minimum of 50 sq km," the report said.

It also mentioned that the review is pending before the Cabinet Secretariat. A committee of secretaries has already been constituted.

At present, there are four PCPIRs in Dahej (Gujarat), Paradip (Odisha), Visakhapatnam-Kakinada (Andhra Pradesh) and Cuddalore-Nagapattinam (Tamil Nadu).
The total investment made in these four PCPIRs reached around Rs 1.60 lakh crore by the end of March 2015 and provided employment to around 2.23 lakh people.