APL faces fincial crisis, magement takes austerity measures

From a Correspondent

mrup, May 11: Assam Petrochemicals Limited (APL at mrup is a State Government undertaking conceived and implemented with tural gas as feed stock.

The company started its commercial production of methanol and formalin in 1976. Since then APL has rapidly been raising to the point of perfection from all sides, crossing several obstacles like market crunch and competition, thus contributing crores of revenue per annum to the government exchequer by way of taxes and levies. The existing protection capacity of APL is 100 TPD Methanol and 125 TPD formalin. APL has already spruced up to embark upon the scheme for setting up a new integrated 500 TPD Methanol, 200 TPD Acetic Acid project costing a total capital outlay of Rs 1,028 crore with the equity participation from the Government of Assam and M/S Oil India Ltd. The work on the project is in progress.

But APL is now facing a serious fincial crisis owing to the price hike of tural gas and power which has escalated the production cost. This situation is further aggravated by the downward trend of the intertiol price of petrochemical products including methanol and the availability of the low-price imported methanol in Indian market for which APL has to sell its product methanol at a price which is lower than the production cost, incurring heavy loss per month.

If such situation continues for long, it would surely bring threat to APL. Time has already come to undertake time-bound measures to save APL, one of the most profit-making State Government PSUs, from impending doom. Sources said that APL magement has already taken some austerity measures in this regard.