Paswan: At your service

Mumbai, March 4: Union chemicals minister Ram Vilas Paswan today said he would seek a rollback of the 5 per cent customs duty on naphtha proposed in the budget.

The naphtha levy was a setback for Haldia Petrochemicals (HPL), Bengal’s showpiece project.

“We had requested the finance minister not to impose the customs duty on naphtha, but it has happened. I am concerned and will write soon to the Prime Minister (Manmohan Singh) and finance minister (P. Chidambaram) to roll it back,” Paswan said on the sidelines of a conference organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) here.

As reported by this paper earlier, if imposed, the duty will saddle Haldia Petrochemicals with an additional expenditure of Rs 290-300 crore, or about 80 per cent of the profit projected by the company this year. The Bengal government is the largest shareholder in Haldia Petrochemicals.

India imports between four and five million tonnes of naphtha, or 60 per cent of its requirement.

Per capita use of the raw material, which is a feedstock to produce polymers, in the country is only five kilograms against 118 kilograms in the US.

Polymer production is around 5.4 million tonnes, and there are plans to increase it to around 12 million tonnes by 2012.

Steel price

Paswan, who is also the steel and fertilisers minister, said his ministry had no intention to intervene in steel pricing since the previous experience was bitter. “Last time, when we tried to do it (intervene), there was severe criticism from all over, including the media. We have thus taken a decision not to intervene in that matter.”

Last month, steel companies had raised prices by Rs 2,500 a tonne before Paswan prevailed upon them to roll back prices by Rs 500 a tonne on selected items.

However, the minister said, there was a case for intervention if prices were jacked up considerably.

The budget failed to cheer steel companies as Chidambaram left untouched the export duty on iron ore and the customs duty on coking coal.