Mumbai: The government has launched the Integrated Petroleum, Chemicals and Petrochemical Investment Regions (PCPIR) policy aimed at boosting the manufacturing sector, increasing exports and making the sector globally competitive.

Unveiling the PCPIR policy, union minister for chemicals, fertilisers and steel Ram Vilas Paswan said: "The policy framework has been designed in a manner to promote investment in this sector and make the country an important hub for both domestic as well as international markets," adding, "The policy framework has been so designed as to promote investment in this sector and make the country an important hub for both domestic and international markets.''

The policy would give a thrust to industrialisation in the regions by way of setting up of down-stream units, in turn, leading to the development of socio-economic infrastructure in the areas in and around the regions.

Each PCPIR is likely to get an investment of Rs35,000 crore to Rs40, 000 crore and the central government will ensure physical infrastructure including rail, national highways, ports, airports and telecommunication facilities in a time bound manner with investment of around Rs10,000 crore to Rs15,000 crore per PCPIR. The state governments will be responsible for providing infrastructure facilities like power, water, sewerage and health, safety and environmental concerns.

The government is anticipating an overall investment of $ 20 billion and the first PCPIR is likely to come up by the end of this year.

The PCPIRs would specifically delineated investment regions with an area of around 250 sq km for manufacturing facilities for domestic and export led production in petroleum, chemicals and petrochemicals along with associated services and infrastructure.

The minimum processing area for the PCPIR will be 40 per cent of the total notified area. The processing area may or may not be contiguous. The PCPIR may include one or more Special Economic Zones, Industrial Parks, Free Trade and Warehousing Zones, Export Oriented Units, or Growth Centres, duly notified under the relevant Central or state legislation or policy.

The integrated chemicals regions, apart from helping overall development of the regions, help in generating direct and indirect employment, he said.

A group of ministers had in January approved the chemicals and fertilisers ministry's proposal to build PCPIRs. The PCPIR policy is a major initiative of the Prime Minister, who had constituted a task force to expedite the process of setting up such regions.