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Plastic manufacturers and processors have urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to constitute a regulatory authority to curb undue profiteering by petrochemical companies.
Hit by sharp increase in price of raw material (resin), ten leading plastics associations have written to Modi demanding constitution of Petrochemical Regulatory Authority to ensure that the PSUs such as IOCL, GAIL, BPCL support the domestic processing units by ensuring adequate supply at a fair price.
‘Ease raw material imports’
They urged the government to stop imposing barriers such as anti dumping duty and mandatory BIS standards as demand for several polymers exceed domestic production.
They also want an immediate ban on export of raw material to ease domestic supply and check price rise.
The plastics industry consists of over 50,000 plastics processing units of which 90 per cent are MSME’s. It contributes more than ₹3 lakh crore to the country’s GDP.
Prices soaring
Chandrakant Turakhia, President, the All India Plastics Manufacturers Association said the prices of the raw materials such as PVC, ABS, polypropylene, PC, PET have increased by 20-140 per cent 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,” he said in the letter.
Compared to international prices, the rationale for price increase by domestic producers are not justified, he added.
Since domestic petrochemical producers do not enter into forward contracts like in overseas, price manipulation by domestic companies become easy, it said.
Finished goods
The growing threat of imports of plastics intermediate and finished goods from China would prove to be a disaster to make India ‘Atma Nirbhar’.
Indian plastics processing units have become highly uncompetitive in the global market as polymer prices are 10-15 per cent cheaper in the international market, said Arvind Mehta, Chairman Governing Council, the All India Plastics Manufacturers Association.
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