Mumbai, Nov 23 (PTI) COVID-19 presents opportunities to the domestic chemicals sector as the global trade is shifting in India's favour and the industry needs to work together to tap this chance, industry leaders said on Monday.

"There's an opportunity, there is a global trade which is shifting in India's favour and Indian companies are pretty much well poised to take advantage of it. But for that we need strong regulatory standards and adherence to regulatory standards by the industry," Tata Chemicals Managing Director and CEO R Mukundan said at CII's virtual panel discussion on 'Indian Chemicals and Petrochemicals Conference (ICPC) 2020'.

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"All of us need to comply to the highest level of standards. It must spread more widely than the top 100-200 companies. We need to make the process much wider and more democratised in many ways," Mukundan said.

He further said that many of the Indian companies, barring a few, don't have global scale plans.

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"If you have to play a part in the gaps, you need risk capital and we need global scale plans. I think that will be very critical," he said.

Grasim Industries Chemical Division CEO Jayant Dua stated that there is a need to look at the global chemical parks and the renewable policy.

"I think clearly there is merit in having chemical parks, next to a coastal area, for deep sea pipelines. Also, we need to focus on renewable as 65 per cent of our industry's input cost is power. There is still a need to work on alignment cross state so that renewable power flows without having state specific legislation," he opined.

The industry, he said, needs to work on collaboration because molecules, the more complex molecules, will come under IPR and there is an India potential over there.

"We also need to work about stricter compliance laws, particularly on toxicity of material," he added.

UPL chairman Rajju Shroff said the industry needs policy support in order to grow, both in the domestic as well as the global market.

He also stated that India's dependency on imported intermediate will soon be over as the country will begin producing its own.

"We are dependent on imported intermediate from China, but within one or two years, there are big plans and Indian companies will be able to make intermediate in the country," he added.

Shroff further stated that the Environment Ministry needs to work with the industry in finding solutions which will benefit the ecology.

"The Environment Ministry need not only fine the industries. The Ministry needs to work with the industry and find solutions for safe dispositions waste so that the ecology is not affected,” he added.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)