The Central government has agreed to extend the deadline given to the pharmaceutical industry associations to register in Pharmaexcil by another four months. The associations will now have time up to April 2004 to raise the necessary corpus fund of Rs 3 crore and approach the government for completing the registration formalities of the new export promotion council.

The decision has come after the industry associations like Indian Drugs Manufacturers Association (IDMA) and Bulk Drugs Manufacturers Association (BDMA) approached the Centre for more time to collect the required amount.

The government, however, rejected the industry proposal for bringing down the corpus amount from Rs 3 crore to Rs 1 crore.

According to official sources, the government agreed to the industry request for more time as the industry had a valid reason for not collecting the required amount.

"All pharma exporters have paid their annual membership fees to the Basic Chemicals, Pharmaceuticals & Cosmetics Export Promotion Council (Chemexcil) for the current year. The industry was right in pointing out that they cannot ask the same members to go for additional membership with Pharmexcil. So the government thought it fit to give them more time", sources explained.

The industry associations' now hopes to get its members pay the next year's subscription fees to the new council and not Chemexcil. They intend to fulfill the required norms and announce the formation of the council by March 2004.

The government sources informed that the very reason for announcing a deadline was to make the industry work towards the formation of the council. "Nothing was done for the last two years, after the government agreed to the industry proposal for the formation of the new council. We hope the deadline will turn them active", they said.

However, the main issue, that of raising the corpus fund, remains unsolved. With a miniscule of what needs to be achieved has really reached the associations; IDMA will have to work hard to materialize the dream within the stipulated time.

The associations will have to raise Rs three crore as a corpus, set up a committee and finalise bylaws as per the model drawn by the central government within this time frame.