Your question, "China is adding 3 World scale plants with a total annual capacity of 11,00,000 TPA, more than India's total annual PVC production. Do you think Chinese are less prudent than Indians?"

China is planning to build world scale capacities of PVC because their manufacturing capacity is about 2.5 million tonnes compared to their consumption of about 4.7 million tonnes in 2001.

China at present is importing more than 2 million tonnes of PVC every year. The new capacity of 1.1 million tonnes among 3 World scale plants of about 350-400kt/plant would only partly fulfill its requirements. China is far ahead in consumption of all polymers compared to India.

In our opinion, India will require atleast 30 years to catch up with China in plastics consumption. This is despite our expected growth of about 12-14% compared to 8% of China, because the present difference in consumption is very significant.
A Simple illustration given below explains the basic premise:

These calculations are based on the following projected average growth rates in the coming decades:

The time horizon could be even longer if China continues to have better growth compared to the above projections.

PVC consumption in India after reaching up to almost 735-740 kt in 1998-1999 stagnated between 680-700kt in the last 2 years. While the global consumption has almost remained stagnant at about 25 million tonnes, Indian PVC consumption in 2001-2002 is expected to grow to almost 760-780kt. All the developed economies like that of North America, Europe and Japan had a negative growth in 2001. China, India and some other Asian countries have grown this year.

There is a strong need to build additional capacity in India since the present capacity of 788kt is almost in balance with the demand. The present economic size of a World Scale plant is 400kt, which is almost 50% of the present consumption in India.

It therefore requires careful economic consideration to set up a new World Scale PVC capacity in India.