MUMBAI, July 9: With the full ramifications of signing the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) just about becoming clear now, it is almost certain that the chemical manufacturing companies in the country are not going to benefit too much. The main benefit that would have accrued would be if Indian chemicals manufacturing companies were now to be allowed to buy technology which they were prohibited from accessing earlier. Another possible benefit could be the Government doing away with the practice of issuing licenses for exports of certain chemicals.

To understand the impact, however, it is important to go into some background of what the situation was prior to India ratifying the CWC. The CWC has a list of chemicals which could possibly have dual-use -- that is, as chemicals themselves or as chemical weapons such as nerve gas. So far there are only 4 or 5 companies in India which produce 5 chemicals which fall under Schedule 3 of the CWC -- of the 46 chemicals which can be used as chemical weapons, chemicals in this schedule are considered the least potent. The companies include United Phosphorous, Transpek and Excel, all headquartered in Mumbai.

According to Government officials, in the pre-CWC era, several of these companies got into trouble since on various occassions the US believed they were shipping chemical weapons to countries like Iraq, via Jordan. It was to counter this, that the Government of India decided that it would give export licenses for these 5 chemicals -- this license would be a sort of proxy guarantee that the chemicals were being sold to bona fide customers. This meant that the Government did not issue export licenses is the chemicals were being shipped to a trader since this could then be re-sold to almost anybody.

Now let's get back to the post-CWC ratification era. The fact of the matter is that the quantities of these chemicals which are exported don't really amount to much. The Government issues licenses to export roughly $5 million of such chemicals per annum. So, even if the Government decides to relax on the licenses front -- incidentally, this is not being considered right now -- it won't make too much of a difference. By contrast, United Phosphorous, exports a host of other chemicals -- last year, it's total exports were Rs 180 crore, up from a Rs 38 crore in 1992-93 -- which do not fall under possible dual use chemicals. Says Reena Ramachandran, chairperson & managing director of Hindustan Organic Chemicals Ltd: "We suport the treaty for the reasons behind it.''

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.