The Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) during its National Executive Committee meeting at Hyderabad on Monday presented a growth agenda for the State of Andhra Pradesh in the pharmaceuticals sector, in the presence of Dr YS Rajasekhara Reddy, Chief Minister of AP.

Speaking on the occasion, Onkar S Kanwar, president of FICCI, suggested that in order to strengthen the pharmaceuticals industry in the state, the government should ensure increasing the supply of skilled workers, boost the efforts of developing the Pharma city at Parawada near Visakhapatnam, attract domestic and international venture capitalists and encourage them to invest in SME research units.

The Pharma industry in the state should focus on areas highly relevant to India such as tropical diseases and alternate medicine, and diversify its services into areas such as stability testing, bio-equivalence tests and clinical research.

The new patent regime offers abundant opportunities for off-patent bulk drugs and generics for international market, contract research, contract manufacturing and clinical trials, Kanwar added.

In a recent survey conducted by FICCI on the manufacturing competitiveness involving 102 sectors, including pharma industry, several sectoral issues have been brought into notice. The major issues concerning pharma sector has been rigid price control, high tax rates, lack of patent protection and higher DPCO coverage with governmental control on prices.

The pharma industry expects extension of benefit of weighted deduction for a further period of 10 to 15 years, treating expenditures on patents filed abroad as well as royalty payments made by companies as research and development expenditures, he added.