Indian Plastics Insitutue, the premier organisation with more than 2000 professional members from the Indian Plastics Industry, recently organised a function to honour those members who have contributed significantly to the success of the Institute over the last few years. The awardees included three members of the plastemart.com's Advisory Board. The function also included three presentations on Indian Plastics industry from eminent personalities;

	Mr. Kamal Nanavaty,
	Mr. K. Agrawal,
	Prof. Sivaram from NCL, Pune

Mr. Kamal Nanavaty, President for Cracker and Polymer business, of the largest Indian petrochemical company, Reliance Industries Limited, presented a paper on the emerging scenario of plastics business in India.
Economic reforms were introduced in India in the early nineties. Since then, from a level of about 1 million tonnes, consumption has reached a level of almost 4 million tonnes in 2001. The spectacular growth of about 14% over the last decade compared to 6% GDP growth in the some period is expected to continue in the coming decade. This would be because economic reforms will continue the Indian GDP growth of 6-7%. Mr. Nanavaty forecasted that by 2010, plastics consumption in India will exceed 12-12.5 million tonnes and therefore India will emerge as the third largest country in the world after USA and China.

To answer the question upper most in the minds of most Indian entrepreneurs, he furnished some basic data comparing China with India. Figures indicate that China will continue to out perform India even after the next 3 decades. Certain inherent economic differences are apparent between the two countries.

China has a GDP greater than US$1 Trillion, compared to India's US$0.5 trillion, in 2000. Both countries need to provide for almost the same size of population over the next decades.

This will continue to reflect in atleast 7-8% growth for China on 20 million tonnes compared to 14% on 4 million. It would therefore be quite difficult to visualise that India will catch up with China even after 2-3 decades.

The other two presentations made by the very successful processor Mr. K.Agrawal of Alpha Packaging, India's largest PP TQ film manufacturer and an eminent research scientist Dr.Sivaram, Deputy Director of National Chemical Laboratory brought about some interesting parameters that Indian Plastics Industry needs to adopt in the emerging business scenario.

Adopting economies of scale in production will enable the Indian plastics processor to become cost competitive, particularly in the global scenario. Besides, very efficient financial controls in inventory levels as well as outstandings are essential for growth in the processing sector, said Mr. Agarwal.

Statistics provided by Dr. Sivaram highlighted the meagre resources (<1.5%) alloted for research and development by the Indian plastics industry. This is particulary low when compared to China that spends almost 9-10%. To grow it is essential that the industry enhances these resources siginificantly. He threw light on the outstanding research and international patents filed by NCL.

We at Plastemart.com are very proud to inform our viewers that the following 4 members of our advisory board, along with others, were honoured by Indian Plastics Institute.

	Mr. A.E. Ladhabhoy
	Mr. Bipin Shah
	Mr. Jitu Vadodaria
	Mr. Vijay Merchant

These and other eminent members of our board have helped plastemart develop and grow to be India's leading portal for the plastics industry. Their regular contributions, valuable advice, feedback and support have helped plastemart grow to its current position.