The Department of Ayush will be spending Rs. 26 crore towards quality control of Ayurveda, Siddha, Unani and Homeopathy drugs by funding the state administrations including drug testing labs during the current financial year.

The amount will be spent under the centrally sponsored schemes to extend financial assistance to States for upgradation of drug testing facilities and state pharmacies. Financial assistance would also be given to Ayush manufacturing units to become GMP compliant, sources said.

This is going to be a big hike compared to the allotment of Rs. 8 crore of the previous year. The Department disbursed Rs. 13 crore towards the purpose during the year ended on March 31, according to the revised plan and non-plan estimates.

Another Rs. 22 crore would be spent for setting up of common facilities for raw material standardisation and quality control of finished products at locations having cluster of Ayush industries this year. Though an amount of Rs. 27 crore was earmarked for the purpose during the last fiscal year, the scheme could not take off well and only Rs. 9 crore could be utilised so far. The department sources said that they would make sure that the scheme was implemented well during the fiscal and details were being chalked out in this direction.

In the general budget for the year also, there is a sizeable increase in the allocation for the Indian medicines. Rs. 534 crore has been set apart for the AYUSH department, against Rs. 488 crore of the previous year. However, underutilization of the plan fund remained the bane still as it could utilise only Rs 390 crore during the year, with many of the planned programmes remaining on the papers.

There is a cut in the allotment for assistance to accredited Ayush centres of excellence in non-governmental and private sector engaged in Ayush education, drug development, research, clinical research and folk medicines. Though the Government earmarked Rs. 7 crore for the purpose last year, only Rs 3 crore was spent finally. This has prompted the Finance Minister to reduce the allocation to Rs 4 crore this year.