The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas plans to extend financial partnerships to startups engaged in the oil sector to give a boost to the 'Startup India' initiative.

Dharmendra Pradhan, Ministry of State (Independent charge), Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, while speaking at the IndianOil Petrochemical Conclave, said: "All the oil public sector undertaking units (PSUs) will invest and provide financial partnerships to new startups engaged in exploration and production and downstream activities to encourage local innovation and add skills."

Pradhan said the Government is working on a policy to give 10 per cent purchase preference to local entrepreneurs to give a boost to the entrepreneurship ecosystem in the petrochemical industry.

He said the sector has seen a 14 per cent growth which is about 1.5 times GDP growth and that the government has a set target to increase the petrochemical industry's output to 12 million metric tonnes from the current capacity of 6 million metric tonnes. Pradhan added that capital outlays worth Rs 2,00,000 crores are expected to be made in diverse product lines- in Polyester intermediates/Polyester Film/yarn; Polymers and other petrochemicals to set up a petrochemical complex.

B Ashok, Chairman, Indian Oil Corporation, said that the company plans to invest Rs 7,650 crore in setting up a petrochemical complex at its Paradip refinery in Odisha in the next three to four years. The complex will have a 700,000 tonnes per annum polypropylene plant and ethylene derivatives complex to manufacture around 350,000 tonnes of mono-ethylene glycols.

On being asked about the government not passing on the benefit of sliding crude oil prices to consumers, Pradhan said, that the government has passed on the 60 per cent benefit of rising crude oil prices, but the cess that the government collects is used by the government to create a buffer to counter the volatility in crude oil prices.

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