The SME Pharma Industries Confederation (SPIC) has urged the Rajya Sabha Secretariat to call a joint meeting with different ministries such as ministry of health, department of pharmaceuticals and finance ministry to solve the problems being faced by the small pharma industries and also to implement 'Affordable Priced Medicine Plan' so as to prevent MNC takeover and provide much needed relief to the consumers and SMEs in the country.
In a letter to the Joint Director, Rajya Sabha Secretariat, Subhashree Panigrahi, the SPIC has expressed surprise that on the one hand the government is seemingly concerned about MNC takeover, which would definitely jeopardize availability of affordable drugs, but on the other hand it continues to change policies to facilitate takeover by them.
Stating that different union ministries are working at cross purposes due to lack of coordination, SPIC said that in a recent move, barcoding has been mandated for exports from July 1 this year by DGFT without taking stakeholders into confidence. There are serious pitfalls and zero advantage of the policy. Most SMEs will get wiped out from exports with this one stroke. This will either help Chinese companies or MNCs at the cost of Indian pharma SMEs who are responsible for at least 40 per cent share in Rs.55,000 crore export.
Earlier, the health ministry had implemented GMP and GLP despite serious and valid objections by stakeholders, while the MRP-based excise was implemented by the finance ministry in 2005 without even taking pharma SMEs or even the department of pharmaceuticals into confidence. This has resulted in price rise of 326 per cent in one year alone as per NIPER report.
“But, simply tinkering with FDI norms now may not help as 25 per cent market share has already been taken over by six MNCs. As a solution, we had devised and submitted to DOP a plan whereby prices of all medicines can be brought down to half - across the board with SME support”, SPIC said.
But all this is possible with inter-ministerial coordination which is totally missing. Each Ministry is making changes without consulting the other or the stakeholders – which is being exploited by vested interests. Large companies have managed to get changes favourable to MNCs as it enables them to notch up mega deals with them.