Plastic manufacturers urge India’s PM to constitute regulatory authority

In his address, PM Modi urged Indians to show courage and resolve, follow "Lakshman Rekha" for several days more. (PTI). Sketched by the Pan Pacific Agency.

NEW DELHI, Dec 2, 2020, Deccan Herald. Plastic manufacturers and processors urge Prime Minister Narendra Modi to constitute a regulatory authority to curb undue profiteering in the petrochemicals industry, Deccan Herald reported.

Around a dozen industry associations have also demanded to stop imposing an anti-dumping duty, mandatory BIS standards, decrease import duty on raw material and ban/restrict export of raw material from the country to enable the plastic industry to survive and remain competitive with other countries like China. The plastics industry in India consists of 50,000+ plastics processing units of which 90% are MSMEs.

In a letter, Chandrakant Turakhia, President of The All India Plastics Manufacturers Association has pleaded with the PM for help ‘to save the plastics processing industry which is on the verge of collapse due to the dramatic increase in the price of raw material by raw material manufacturers in the country.’

To elaborate their grievances the associations have said in the letter that the prices of raw materials like PVC, ABS, polypropylene, PC, PET have increased multifold ranging between 20 and 140% over the last five months. “The petrochemical companies are taking advantage of the surge in polymer prices by restricting the supplies to domestic processing units and releasing the material after increasing the prices at regular intervals.

Unfortunately, PSUs have also joined hands with private players and are dancing to their tunes and are not serving the processing industries in a fair manner. The rationale of price increased by domestic industries are not justified as compared to international prices,” the letter has stated.

It has also mentioned that since domestic petrochemical producers do not enter into forward contracts like overseas producers do, price play and manipulation by domestic companies become very easy. Domestic producers demand anti-dumping proceedings on select grades of polymers on which they are already charging premium due to constrained availability. Raw material manufacturers export raw material in large quantities and create scarcity of the polymer raw materials. This has resulted in an exponential rise in the price of raw material by petrochemicals companies in the last 5 months which is threatening the survival of thousands of plastics processing units in India, the letter has said.

It has been signed by heads of the various plastics manufacturing and processors associations.

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