Even as Union Chemicals Minister Ramvilas Paswan has sought Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh's intervention for an expeditious decision on National Pharma Policy, the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) has started efforts to rope in all associations to make a common presentation before the Group of Ministers (GoM) before it finalises the policy. If it gets positive response from different associations, the CII is planning to approach the GoM once again to apprise them of the industry's concerns on the policy in the wake of latest developments.

If the CII succeeds in its fresh move, it will be for the first time that the associations will be approaching the GoM as one team. So far, different associations have been working at cross purposes due to lack of coordination between them. All the major pharma associations like OPPI, IDMA, CIPI, BDMA, IPA, FOPE have already made their presentations separately to the GoM headed by Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar.

CII spokesman Sasikant Misra said that the CII is planning to approach all the major associations before meeting the GoM. The next meeting of the GoM, which has so far met four times during the last one and half years of its constitution, is expected to be the final one.

For some time, CII has been taking lead in bringing all the major pharma associations on a common platform to discuss issues concerning the industry as a whole. It successfully brought different pharma associations on a single platform in Mumbai on June 4 this year to discuss common issues that are confronting the industry.

Representatives from all major pharma industry associations including OPPI, IDMA, CIPI, BDMA, etc participated in the meeting. However, IPA did not attend the meeting, which was preliminary in nature and discussed several common issues of the industry. They included national pharma policy, counterfeit drugs, labour issues, SME sector issues, HR issues, etc. As other issues can wait for some time, the meeting decided to take up the issue of pharma policy first which is being finalized by the GoM.