How does the chemical products contribute to an economy?
The chemical products is a very important contributor to the wealth of a country. For example it contributes over 1% to the Gross National Product (GNP) of European countries, which is over 6% of the total GNP produced by all manufacturing industries. Generally personnel in the industry are among the most well rewarded of all manufacturing industries because the industry has the largest proportion of highly qualified people and generally it is the most productive.
Consumer chemical products are sold directly to the public. They include, for example, detergents, soaps and other toiletries. The search for more effective and environmentally safe detergents has increased over the last 20 years, particularly in finding surfactants that are capable of cleaning anything from sensitive skin to large industrial plants. Parallel to this, much work has been done in producing a wider range of synthetic chemical products for toiletries, cosmetics and fragrances.
This category covers a wide variety of chemical products for crop protection, paints and inks, colorants (dyes and pigments). It also includes chemicals used by industries as diverse as textiles, paper and engineering. There has been a tendency in the US and Europe to focus on this sector rather than the basic chemicals discussed above because it is thought that, with active research and development (R & D), speciality chemicals deliver better and more stable profitability. New products are being created to meet both customer needs and new environmental regulations. An everyday example is household paints which have evolved from being organic solvent-based to being water-based. Another is the latest ink developed for ink-jet printers.

These are relatively low cost chemical products used throughout manufacturing and agriculture. They are produced in very large amounts, some in millions of tonnes a year, and include chlorine, sodium hydroxide, sulfuric and nitric acids and chemical products for fertilizers. As with petrochemicals, many emerging countries are now able to produce them more cheaply than companies based in the US and Europe. This has led to tough competition and producers of these chemical products worldwide work continuously to reduce costs while meeting ever more stringent environmental and safety standards.
Basic chemicals, produced in large quantities, are mainly sold within the chemical products and to other industries before becoming products for the general consumer. For example, ethanoic acid is sold on to make esters, much of which in turn is sold to make paints and at that point sold to the consumer. Huge quantities of ethene are transported as a gas by pipeline around Europe and sold to companies making poly(ethene) and other polymers. These are then sold on to manufacturers of plastic components before being bought by the actual consumer. Figure 3 shows a plant producing chemicals which it then immediately uses to manufacture other chemicals.