This interim report represents the first comprehensive attempt to address significant information gaps regarding the level of subsidisation received by the primary plastics polymer (PPP) production industry. The report specifically examines the stages of production from the processing of raw plastic materials—such as steam cracking of naphtha, isolation of alkenes from raw natural gas, and coal gasification—through to the production of basic resins and the compounding and extrusion of plastic pellets. This segment of the industry is geographically concentrated and dominated by a small number of very large enterprises, some of which are state-owned. Subsidies certainly are provided both upstream and downstream of that segment but are beyond the scope of this study.

The objective of this report is to fill the existing information gap as much as possible, given the proprietary nature of some data, the importance of state-owned enterprises, and other transparency challenges. The study focuses on standard (‘commodity’) polymers that constitute the bulk of global polymer production: polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polyvinyl chloride (PVC), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), and polystyrene (PS).”