The 3rd annual general meeting of the Confederation of Indian Pharmaceutical Industry (CIPI-ssi) will be held at Jaipur on November 19, to assess the impact of the government policies on the industry during the last year.
The meeting will take stock of various government policies and their impact on SSIs with a view to make some suggestions for improving their working conditions. The SSI sector of pharma industry was passing through bad times during the whole of last year resulting in heavy losses to the members, CIPI sources said.
"We consider 2006 as one of the worst years for SSIs in terms of adverse government policies and actions. Almost 2000 drug manufacturing units have either closed or are running at 10 per cent of production capacity on account of these policies. Pharmaceutical industry had incurred a loss of approximately Rs 5000 crore in this year," according to T S Jaishankar, chairman, CIPI.
The higher rates of excise duty on MRP, the drug price control policy, extension of excise exemption in excise free zones for three years and the bilingual labelling policy are some of these adverse actions, he said. The confederation is planning to have its representation in all the related decision making committees and ministries, along with establishing its own strength with proven statistics.
During the meeting, the confederation will articulate its demands and opinions for the pre-budget memorandum. The meeting will also discuss the possibilities of joint business participation by its members for better opportunities for SSIs, informed T S Jaishankar, chairman, CIPI.
The confederation will advise its members to come up with the current statistics of the small scale companies and to find out better opportunities through merger and joint ventures including common raw material purchase programs. Plans are to disperse similar ideas on cluster development and joint business projects through out its members for healthy discussion and positive results. The CIPI will pass through an in-house election for office bearers within next two month.
CIPI will take up a programme to build up a database of its members and the collective strength of the organization. An amount of Rs 5 to Rs 10 lakh will be required for data collection alone. The Confederation expects to make the fund available from the SSI ministry, as the database would similarly be useful for the government. The Confederation has also plans to appoint a liaison officer co-ordinate member relations and programs of various committees under the organization.