Mounting public protest and failure to rope in anchor tenants appear to have forced the government to put the controversial Visakhapatnam-Kakinada Petroleum, Chemicals and Petrochemicals Region (PCPIR) project under cold storage, as per The Hindu. The memorandum of agreement was signed between the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas and the Government of Andhra Pradesh on October 1, 2009. However, so far there is no initiative to execute the project.
The environmental public hearing, which was supposed to be held on December 14 last year, has been put off indefinitely and the AP Pollution Control Board has not announced any fresh date till now. PCPIR project envisaged an investment of Rs.3.43 lakh crore by promoting several sector-specific and multi-product Special Economic Zones, industrial parks, free trade and warehousing zones and export-oriented growth centres in five to seven years. The Government of India had promised US$1.3 bln out of total investment of Rs.19,031 crore planned on infrastructure.
The project had received a big setback with Total of France and Saudi Aramco backing out their investment plan in developing a Greenfield refinery and petrochemical complex. There is speculation that after shelving PCPIR, the government may take it up in some other form to make it part of Visakhapatnam-Chennai Industrial Corridor for which Asian Development Bank has pledged support to mobilise funds.
18-Sep-15 
{{comment.DateTimeStampDisplay}}
{{comment.Comments}}