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The Andhra Pradesh government has shelved a petrochemical investment project planned about 10 years back, which was to come up between Visakhapatnam and Kakinada, as it failed to attract any investment.
“The Petroleum, Chemicals and Petrochemical Investment Region (PCPIR) project is a closed chapter now. No investment has come in so far and nothing is expected. We don’t even have a plan for it,” a top official said.
Planned over 603.58 sq km along the Bay of Bengal coast, it was expected to attract an investment of ₹3.43 lakh crore and create 12 lakh jobs, 5.25 lakh direct and 6.75 indirect, by 2017-18.
Widening highways
A 140-km industrial corridor between Visakhapatnam and Kakinada was also part of the plan. “The objective of PCPIR is to create world class infrastructure by widening National Highways and State Highways, providing rail links, upgrading airports, seaports and extending power and water supply (for the numerous industrial units),” the government policy said at the time.
As part of it, the AP government had signed several memorandums of understanding with major players in the petroleum sector for setting up units in the PCPIR.
Centre’s approval
The then Congress government headed by YS Rajasekhara Reddy formulated the PCPIR policy in May 2007 and the Centre approved it in March 2009. In May 2008, the state government constituted the PCPIR Special Development Authority to undertake all development works and in October 2009 a memorandum of agreement was signed with the Centre for executing the project.
The state was supposed to spend ₹19,031 crore on development of roads, water and power supply with a ₹ 6,334 crore assistance from the Centre.
No public hearing, too
The consultancy engaged for preparation of the master plan for the PCPIR was to be delivered in 2012. Even the mandatory public hearing as part of the Environment Impact Assessment was not held all these years, the official said.
When the PCPIR was conceived, the present Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu had opposed it as the Leader of the Opposition.
But, after he became Chief Minister in 2014, he too sought to market it for getting industries but such efforts did not yield results.
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