March 21, 2009

Japan trip for Nayachar


Calcutta, March 19: A state team will travel to Japan and South Korea to net investors for the Nayachar and Haldia chemical hub. Led by industry secretary Sabyasachi Sen, the team will be part of a larger delegation of the Union ministry for chemicals and fertilizers.
It will meet top officials of Mitsubishi Chemicals, Mitsui Chemicals and Itochu Corporation in Tokyo from March 23-25, followed by meetings with Korean companies — LG Chemicals and Hyundai Chemicals — for two days in Seoul. “We are going to meet officials of the rank of president and above of these companies,” Sen said. The team will leave on Saturday night.

The Union ministry delegation will have representatives from Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh, too. The trip is part of a marketing support initiative of the Centre to the three states where petrochemical hubs are coming up. Industry chamber Ficci coordinated the initiative. The Bengal team will have Nandini Chakravorty, the executive director of the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation, which is an infrastructure partner in the Nayachar hub with Indonesia’s Salim Group.

Swapan Bhowmik, the managing director of Haldia Petrochemicals, and Sanjay Malhotra, a director of the Delhi-based Cals Refinery that is setting up a unit in Haldia, will also be in the team. An official of Singapore’s Jurong Corporation, which set up Asia’s largest chemical hub there, will be with the Bengal team. Jurong is preparing the plan for Nayachar.

In order to break the language barrier, the state has prepared all presentations in Japanese and Korean. “We have translated all documents for the project in the two languages,” Chakravorty said.This trip will be followed by a similar one to the US. Today, chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee told the Assembly that the government was just waiting for a letter from the Centre approving the Nayachar chemical hub. “The hub will change the complexion of the state as many refineries and downstream projects will come up,” he said.

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