The pharmacy of the world is poised for an infrastructure boost, with common facilities and technology upgrades for smaller pharmaceutical enterprises to meet international regulatory standards. The department of pharmaceuticals has asked states and Union territories to ensure wider participation in a new scheme to strengthen the industry.
The scheme has two main components, Assistance to Pharmaceutical Industry for Common Facilities (API-CF) and Pharmaceutical Technology Upgradation Assistance Scheme (PTUAS). Applications for both schemes will be called for soon. “The department of pharmaceuticals has recently launched a scheme, Strengthening of Pharmaceuticals Industry (SPI) with the objective of strengthening the existing infrastructure facilities
of pharmaceutical industries to make India a global leader in the pharma sector. The department of pharmaceuticals now plans to issue a detailed guideline of the SPI scheme and is expected to release the notification of inviting the application for both sub-schemes of the SPI soon," S. Aparna, the secretary of the department, said.
The API-CF sub-scheme, with an outlay of ₹178 crore over the five-year scheme period, aims to strengthen existing pharma clusters’ capacity for sustained growth, by creating common facilities with a focus on research and development labs, testing laboratories, effluent treatment plants, logistic and training centres. The PTUAS sub-scheme, with an outlay of ₹300 crore, proposes support for pharma SMEs, either through up to a maximum of 5% per annum (6% in case of units owned and managed by SC/STs) of interest subvention or through credit-linked capital subsidy of 10%.
Experts said that though India is the largest provider of generic drugs globally, it is still dependent on other countries for medical devices. Rajiv Nath, forum coordinator of the Association of Indian Medical Devices Industry welcomed the development. “India is still 70-80% dependent on other countries and the announcement of the long-awaited medical device policy will help address the 12-15% disability faced in attempting to manufacture medical devices in India," he said.
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