Govt considering to set up PCPIRs: Paswan

Mumbai, Nov 8 (UNI) Union Minister for Chemicals, Fertilizers and Steel Ram Vilas Paswan today said that a policy for setting up petroleum, chemical and petrochemical investment regions (PCPIR) is under active consideration with the government.

Inaugurating the fourth three-day 'India Chem 2006' conference here, Mr Paswan said the regions spread over a vast area of 250 sq km, will provide the best infrastructure and support facilities for setting up such industries. He hinted that such regions would come up near ports.

He said in order to correct the regional imbalance in industrial development, the government had sanctioned Assam Gas Cracker Project, which will be set up in the North East region. The Rs 5,400 crore project would have the capacity to produce 2.20 lakh tonnes of various polymers.

The Minister said the government had drafted a new pharmaceutical policy, which has proposed various measures for promoting the pharma industry. He said an important concern for the government was to make drugs affordable for the common man.

He stressed the need for the pharma industry was to adopt pricing policies aimed at a very large market.

Currently, the pharma industry is of US 12 billion dollars, out of which USD 4.5 billion were export products. In the next five years the pharma industry's turnover is expected to reach USD 25 billion.

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