The Union government is all set to come out with a scheme to provide new pharma and medical devices parks in the country. All the investments for the common facilities like effluent treatment plants and test centres among others will be borne by the Central government and the respective state governments. No details on the fund allocation by the government were disclosed.
“The move by the Union government is to ensure that the pharma and medical devices industry are able to lower the production cost by 30 per cent. When the cost comes by 30 per cent, the industry will be able to compete globally. Therefore to provide that global edge, we are coming out with new scheme. The government has modified the old cluster scheme announced in 2015-2016”, stated minister for chemicals and fertilisers Ananth Kumar.
Kumar was in Bengaluru in connection with the announcement of a conference 'Indian Pharma and India Medical Devices-2017' to be held in Bengaluru from February 11-13, 2017.
“Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh has already taken lead with 300 acres allocated by its state government. This park will come up fast. Recently, the chief minister of Telangana has already evinced interest for pharma and medical devices park near Hyderabad. The third park is on the anvil, in Ahmedabad which is also a Greenfield project and this is because of the interest by the Gujarat chief minister. This will be followed by a Baddi park in Himachal Pradesh. Discussions with Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah to identify acres of land for pharma and medical devices park are on”, he added.
It has been the endeavour of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to provide more facilities for pharma industry. This sector has been gaining significant attention and this event India Pharma and Medical Devices 2017 is expected to garner investments to spur growth of the sector, Kumar said.
Indian pharma is valued at Rs.2.04 lakh crore and we are exporting Rs.1 lakh crore worth of drugs to over 200 countries. We are among the top six pharma manufacturers globally, 3rd in volume and 13th in value. Currently the industry is registering 14.5 per cent growth and expected to touch US$ 55 billion revenues by 2020. One out of 5 tablets the world consumes is from India. The credit for this goes to the Indian pharma manufacturing capability, he said.
The industry should not stop at reverse engineering. We need to go beyond and focus on drug discovery. Therefore we have the National Institute of Pharma Education and Research (NIPER) at Mohali. In the last two and half years, NIPER is being set up at Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Guwhati and Kolkata. NIPER is coming up at Challawad in Rajasthan. Three more are coming up at Nagpur, Chattisgarh and Madurai. The government expects these NIPERs to not just create the quality pool of talent but also look for tie-ups with the industry.
Pharma and medical devices is a sunrise industry for India. In the last five years, the pharma industry of India has become the pharmacy of the world. Our pharma entrepreneurs and large industries have helped to build the pharmacy of the world. This is where the government sees it important to support the sector with scheme to support new pharma and medical devices parks, the Minister said.