At the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party of Korea in January last, the chemical industry was set as a core industry of the country, which plays a key role in the construction of the self-supporting economy and the improvement of people's standard of living, and as a main link in the chain efforts for carrying out the tasks of the new five-year plan.

True to the decision of the 8th Party Congress, the working people in the chemical industrial sector concentrated efforts on strengthening the foundations for independent development this year.

The Hungnam Fertilizer Complex and the Namhung Youth Chemical Complex have propelled the projects for expanding the capacity at the final stage, while putting the fertilizer production on a normal basis. They made remarkable progress in the home production of catalyst like the establishment of production processes of ammonia synthesis catalyst and vinyl chloride polymerization catalyst based on domestic raw materials and thus greatly contributed to the normalization of production and the fulfillment of plans on all indices.

The February 8 Vinalon Complex built a catalyst production base needed for the production of vinyl chloride and vinalon by its own technology to open a prospect for the production revitalization. It also reconstructed the salt solution ground to put the production of caustic soda on a normal basis.

The Sinuiju Chemical Fibre Mill further completed the process for producing paper with reed as the raw material and realized the local production of necessary agents.

And the Chemical Industry Institute has been further strengthened into a powerful research group leading the chemical industry development.

Meanwhile, a national sci-tech presentation in the field of chemical industry took place this year. Submitted to it were papers conducive to the production of chemical fertilizer, establishment of C-1 chemical industry, production of basic chemical goods based on glauberite, home production of catalysts and to realization of the industrialization of Lyocell production to further propel the independent development of the chemical industry.