The Confederation of Indian Pharmaceutical Industries (CIPI) has asked the Union government to grant a special status to the more than 5,000 pharmaceutical formulation units in the country with adequate tax incentives for their very survival.

Pleading to save this section of pharmaceutical units from the impending disaster, CIPI national president T S Jaishankar said it is high time the government gives a separate identity to the formulation units in the country. "The government should differentiate between bulk drugs and large formulation units and understand the specific problems of this sector separately," he said and added that his association will soon approach the government in this regard.

Seeking to remove the wrong impression that all pharma companies are making huge profits, Jaishankar said the fact is that most of the formulation units in the country are in deep crisis due to the uneven field provided by the government policies. The problems faced by formulation units are separate from that of bulk units and other big companies.

Stressing the need to provide a level-playing field for all the players to survive in the country, the CIPI leader said when the government announced a tax holiday in some parts of the country like Uttaranchal and Jammu, the big companies, made a beeline to shift their activities to these areas to reap the tax benefits. But the thousands of formulation units, which do not have the capability to shift their units to these distant areas like Baddi in Uttaranchal, are feeling the pressure.

Jaishankar also said that boosting the SSIs in the country will prove to be an automatic check on price control because only small companies can bring in competition in the market.