Apart from removing the impediments in the Credit Linked Capital Subsidy Scheme (CLCSS) scheme to make it more industry friendly, the department of pharmaceuticals (DoP) will also assist the SSI pharma units in the country in upgrading their units to WHO-GMP compliant by including the machineries for upgradation to WHO-GMP in the CLSS scheme.

According to sources, senior officials in the DoP have already indicated to the SSIs that the department will provide financial assistance to the SSIs who wanted to upgrade their units to WHO-GMP compliant. The DoP has asked the SSI pharma associations to work out the details in this regard.

The DoP's initiative in this regard comes in the wake of murmurs of protest from the SSIs units over the exclusion of SSIs from the DoP's ambitious scheme Pharmaceutical Technology Upgradation Assistance Scheme (PTUAS) announced recently to assist the medium pharma enterprises in the country for the technological upgradation of their units to comply with WHO-GMP, USFDA and other international norms.

Under the PTUAS scheme, which will come into effect from July 1 this year, the DoP will provide an interest subsidy of five per cent on loans availed for such proposals, amounting up to a project cost or loan amount of Rs 10 crore. Under the scheme, technology up-gradation would primarily aim at complying with the Good Manufacturing Practices as per WHOGMP/ other international GMP norms and requirements of premises, plant and equipment for pharmaceutical products for this purpose.

But the DoP did not include the SSIs in the PTUAS scheme as the department was earlier asked by the planning commission to tweak the CLCSS scheme to assist the SSI units in upgrading their units as per GMP norms.

The CLCSS scheme was introduced by the government to financially assist the small and medium units to upgrade their units as per GMP norms. But, there were few takers for the CLCSS scheme due to several complicated procedures which the SSI units found it difficult to follow. Subsequently, the scheme was withdrawn by the Planning Commission citing the reason of poor response.

After the failure of the CLCSS scheme and in view of the outcry for financial assistance from the SSIs for upgrading their units, the DoP mooted another scheme called pharmaceutical technology upgradation fund (PTUF). But, the Rs 560-crore PTUF scheme met with a premature death as the planning commission turned down the scheme on the ground that since the government has already started a scheme called CLCSS for the purpose of technology upgradation of SSI units, there was no need to launch another scheme for the same purpose.

Instead of introducing the PTUF scheme, the planning commission asked the DoP to tweak the CLCSS to make it more industry-friendly. After several rounds of meeting with concerned ministries, the DoP finally came out with a tweaked CLCSS scheme last year. But even after all these exercises, the SSIs are finding it difficult to get the required financial assistance from the government through this scheme as several features of the scheme are still not industry friendly.

Now, the DoP has agreed to once again tweak the scheme to make it further industry-friendly and also to include machineries for upgradation to WHO-GMP in the CLSS scheme, sources said.