Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) will take up the persisting issues of the small scale pharma units in the country with the ministries of Chemicals, Finance and Environment and Forest, based on the recommendation of its task force.

The task force set up by the CII to look into the various issues concerning the SME sector and headed by CIPI chairman T S Jaishankar has already submitted the recommendations and has been in principle approved by the national body, sources said.

The CII Pharma-SME Task Force, which gathered information from the stakeholders and other concerned parties, have called for speedy finalisation of the pending Pharmaceutical Technology Upgradation Fund to extend relief to the struggling small scale units. A major recommendation of the panel is for removing the bottlenecks in securing pollution control board clearance for the units. The CII will take up the issue with the Environment Ministry for a possible solution, Jaishankar told Pharmabiz.

The small pharma units cannot be in the classified section to deny pollution certificates as they do not cause any harm to the nature or the people. The small scale units have been struggling on this issue for long, he said.

The panel also sought more time for the SME to upgrade the facilities in line with the Schedule M norms. It also called for early decision on the pending Rs 560-crore PTUF scheme which was returned by the Planning Commission. The Pharmaceutical Department has to redraft it and forward, clarifying that it was different from the existing Credit Linked Capital Subsidy Scheme.

Though the panel took up the issue of the new bill on spurious drugs, it was not cleared by the CII National Committee of Life Sciences. The CII committee was of the view that the new law, brought in through amendment of Drugs and Cosmetics Act recently, was effective to check the spurious drugs. But, the small scale units are still apprehensive that it could be used to harass the small players.

The panel also has made its recommendations on the issues like separate ministry for SMEs, possibility of in-border alliances, bringing SMEs into the mainstream and quality and regulatory reforms among other things. The recommendations, finalised after meeting the stakeholders and officials, would be brought out in a white paper by the CII committee, besides meeting the policy makers to discuss on the key recommendations, sources said.