The Department of AYUSH is planning to set up common facilities for raw material standardisation at locations having cluster of AYUSH industries at a total cost of Rs 27 crore, with a view to improve the quality of products manufactured in the sector.

The Department will identify the cluster locations in the States and work out the modalities and number of such common facilities to be put up to help the manufacturers of ASU products. The scheme is going to be implemented during the next year, sources said.

Apart from this, the Government will strengthen the existing quality control mechanisms by giving financial assistance to state drug testing laboratories, state pharmacies and manufacturing units of ASU and homoeopathy drugs to become GMP compliant. The Centre is going to spend Rs 8 crore additionally for this purpose.

The Department will also spend about Rs 62.28 crore for other schemes like extra mural research projects through research institutes in the sector during the next financial year. An assistance of Rs 7 crore would be given as assistance to accredited AYUSH centres of excellence in non-governmental and private sector for education, drug development, folk medicines, research and clinical trials.

The Government will also help private players to set up speciality clinics in the existing AYUSH hospitals under the public-private partnership and an initial investment of Rs 5 crore is being envisaged for the purpose.

The proposed allocation would also be used for international exchange programmes, survey on usage and acceptability of AYUSH systems, assistance for international cooperation activities for promotion of ASU drugs, reorientation training programme for personnel in medical education, revitalisation of local health traditions, public health cataloguing, digitalisation and AYUSH information technology network.