Petro investment regions attract Rs 1.5 lakh cr

Petrochemical investment regions in the country have so far received about Rs 1.50 lakh crore by big players including IOCL, ONGC and Gail.

A Petroleum, Chemicals and Petrochemicals Investment Region (PCPIR) is a delineated area of around 250 sq km for setting up manufacturing facilities for domestic and export led production.

In March 2007, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs had approved the proposal to set up PCPIRs in four states -- Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and Tamil Nadu.

Since February 2009, the government has approved setting up of four PCPIRs including each Dahej in Gujarat, Paradeep in Odisha, Vishakhapatnam-Kakinada region in Andhra Pradesh and Cuddalore-Nagapattinam in Tamil Nadu.

"So far investment of around Rs 1,50,000 crore has been made in the four parks approved by the government," source said.

Once fully established, these PCPIRs are expected to attract Rs 7,62,894 crore in investment.

Anchor tenant in Gujarat is ONGC promoted OPal, in Odisha the anchor tenant is IOCL and in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu are HPCL and Nagarjuna Oil Corp respectively.

"Maximum investment has been made into PCPIR in Gujarat amounting to Rs 70,000 crore, followed by Rs 36,000 crore in AP, Rs 35,000 crore in Odisha and Rs 7,000 crore in Tamil Nadu," source said.

PCPIRs in Gujarat and Odisha are in the final stages.

As per the PCPIR policy, the Centre has to ensure the availability of external physical infrastructure linkages to these regions including rail, road connectivity to national highways, ports, airports and telecom connectivity also.

The internal infrastructure of the PCPIR is built and managed by a developer. The external linkages will be provided by the central and the state governments. The users of external as well as internal infrastructure will pay for its use.