The office of DCGI has asked all the Port Officers to clear the export consignment of drugs without delay. The DCGI also wanted them to examine the issues raised by the Drugs and Pharmaceutical Panel of Basic Chemicals, Pharmaceuticals and Cosmetics Export Promotion Council (CHEMEXCIL) with a view to streamline the procedural norms.
In a reply to a parliament question, Panabaka Lakshmi, minister of state, Health and Family Welfare informed that the office of the DCGI has also taken additional measures to facilitate exports of drugs. The measures include exemption from the requirement of registration of manufacturing site given to importers of drugs where the drugs have been imported against advance license, sanctions to manufacture drugs which are not yet approved in the country for the purpose of export only and approval to export drugs with 'neutral labels' that is allowing them to not mention the name and address of manufacturer on the label.
The pharma panel of Chemexcil, headed by Lalit Kumar Jain had submitted a detailed set of guidelines for export and import clearances of drugs and pharmaceuticals at port offices to the DCGI recently.
In a separate reply, the minister informed that the office of DCGI has initiated steps to increase the number of drug samples tested in the country. The minister said that the comprehensive plan being undertaken by the Central Government under a World Bank-assisted capacity building project, will reduce the time needed to test the samples from 3 to 6 months to just one month. As per the project, the present level of testing 38,000 samples a year will be increased to 1 lakh samples a year. The augmentation of the infrastructural facilities in the State Government laboratories and training of drug regulatory and testing manpower is also in progress, the minister informed.