Industry experts want the government to have a focused approach while drafting the foreign trade policy for the APIs, so that key focus is given on developing and encouraging exports. Experts strongly feel that this can be done only by incentivising the domestic API manufacturers with interesting schemes, while simultaneously making laws stringent for imports of APIs.
There are only about 100 bulk drugs that are exported from India while large quantities of bulk drugs are being imported from countries like China, which shows the huge disparity in initiatives taken to promote exports of APIs from India. In the light of the recent events, industry experts are pushing for the government to provide various export incentive schemes and specialised incentive schemes specifically for the small and medium scale enterprises of bulk drug manufactures to venture into overseas markets.
Apart from the Nipun Jain, chief executive officer of Pharmchem stressed that they also want the government to take steps towards amending Chapter 29 which allows import of most of the bulk drugs for free, while they are also batting to increase the import registration fees in lines with their western counterparts and other countries like China, to ensure that there is a decent cap in imports.
Sources point out that the Government's apathy towards the issues and concerns of the bulk drugs manufacturers have been the biggest reason behind the drop in domestic manufacturing and surge of imports. Industry insiders point out that just imposing restriction on imports would not address the issue, as steps should also be taken simultaneously ensure that there is no shortage of bulk drugs in the country.
Interestingly, quality of imported bulk drugs have been an ongoing issue troubling the manufacturers as drugs are imported merely on the basis of GMP certification on most of the cases as manpower and resource crunch at the DCGI's office hardly enables them to send officials to inspect foreign sites. Thus the industry has suggested that to cope with rising cost of the on sight inspection cost the government rise the import registration fees appropriately as done by other importing countries like US and China.
“Considering the deteriorating state of the domestic bulk drugs manufacturing business it is high time for the government to concentrate on adopting corrective measures that will discourage the practice of unnecessary imports of APIs when the country has the resources to manufacture. All we need is a friendly environment that has a dedicated zone for bulk drug manufacturers, proper intervention from the government to address labour issues, escalating cost of land, labour and electricity etc. through support and incentives to keep up with the challenge, “pointed out Jain who is also in the SME panel of Pharmexcil.