Rubber, plastics & packaging.

Rubber and plastic products (excluding tyres, which sit with auto components in Chapter 32) generate an estimated ₹1.7 lakh crore of gross value added in FY26, 0.54% of national GVA, on a revenue pool of about ₹4 lakh crore built from roughly 24 million tonnes of polymer a year. It is one of Indian manufacturing's most fragmented activities: about 50,000 mostly small conversion units, an organised share near 45%, and a listed set of only about ₹1.9 lakh crore of market value concentrated in pipes, films and rigid packaging. The pool has compounded at about 12% a year in nominal terms since FY05 as plastics displaced metal, glass, paper and jute, though value added growth is uneven because PVC and polyolefin price swings dominate converters' reported profits. Growth ahead is anchored in rising per-capita polymer use (17 kg in FY26 versus a 35 kg world average), housing and infrastructure demand for pipes, FMCG/e-commerce demand for packaging, and a structural shift of volume toward organised, branded players under EPR and BIS rules.

Estimated GVA

1.7 ₹ LC · FY26

% of national GVA

0.54 % · FY26

% of manufacturing GVA

3.6 % · FY26

Revenue pool

≈4 ₹ LC · FY26

Polymer consumption

≈24 mn tonnes · FY26

Per-capita polymer use

≈17 (vs world ≈35, China ≈60, US ≈110) kg · FY26

Employment

≈2.5 mn · FY26

Number of processing units

≈50,000 units · FY26