The Ayurvedic industry in India has asked the Centre to make certain amendments in the Union Budget 2003-04 to incorporate some demands of the sector. Two key demands of the industry is to exempt the drug manufacturing units from the purview of excise duty and the related rules as their growth is getting hampered and allocation of required funds for R&D in Ayurveda.

The industry raised the issues as the new Budget completely failed to accommodate these demands, through a submission made to the Health Ministry regarding a Parliament question about the poor allocation in the Budget 2003-04 for the development of Ayurveda.

In the submission, the industry has suggested that there is no justification in including Ayurvedic manufacturing units under the purview of Excise Law and treating them on par with liquor manufacturers. Ayurvedic products especially Asavas and Arishtas only contain self generated alcohol and molasses based alcohol. The selfgenerated alcohol in such products actually imparts the therapeutic value to the products unlike alcohol used for liquor manufacturing.

"Moreover, many of the excise rules cause hardship to the Ayurvedic manufacturers. First of all, there is no provision for changing the name of the person to whom the excise licence has been issued, even if he retires or leaves the post. This is because the licence is issued to a person and not to the industrial unit. Such anomalies should be resolved," says Dr D Ramanathan, General Secretary, Ayurvedic Medicine Manufacturers Organisation of India.

The Centre introduced Excise Duty for all generic Ayurvedic patented and proprietary products. Having the above justifications, the industry now request to withdraw Central Excise Duty on these products and also to arrange a clear classification. Currently, there are mainly four classifications of Ayurvedic products based on which the excise duty is fixed. The excise duties on these groups vary from 16 to 22 per cent.

The industry also lamented that despite the fact that the Ayurvedic medicine manufacturing is totally labour intensive and it promotes cultivation of medicinal plants , the Budget allocation for ISM has been reduced to Rs. 196.47 crore from Rs. 200.86 crore provided during last Budget.

"The central government is not giving any importance to Ayurvedic system of medicine, which is clear from the allocation made during this year's Budget albeit the prominence of Ayurveda is increasing world over," says Ramanathan.

The industry has also requested the government to give more importance to research work. "Though so many private companies have submitted application for Extra Mural Research Projects, the fund allocation is not proper and there was no fund allocation in South India at all," he added.

During 2002-03, the Budget allocation for research work was Rs 89.29 crore. But on revision of the allocation, it was brought down to Rs 49.20 crore. Hence, there was no importance given for research work. Hence the industry has requested that full allocated fund to be utilized for research work in Ayurveda. Currently, the Budget allocation for ISM department for promotion of research is just 2.65 per cent of the total fund allocation for the Allopathic industry. Though the total fund allocation for Department of Health and Family Welfare is Rs 7423.61 crore, the allocation to Department of ISM is only Rs 196.47 crore.