As stand-in finance minister Pranab Mukherjee stuck to the conventions while presenting the interim budget in the Parliament today and turned it a 'non-event' by avoiding any new give-aways or fresh taxes, the pharma and health sectors also drew blank as all other industry sectors reeling under global recession.

With the government going out in a couple of months, the finance minister had nothing to offer afresh for the pharma industry as expected by most of the industry people. But ahead of the general elections and in line with the ruling coalition manifesto line of enticing the 'aam admi', he did slightly increase the allocation for the much-hyped National Rural Health Mission.

"National Rural Health Mission aims to bring about uniformity in quality of preventive and curative healthcare in rural areas across the country. I propose an allocation of Rs.12,070 crore for this programme during the year 2009-10," he said in the budget speech.

Last year, the government had set up apart Rs 12,050 crore for the mission as key instrument of government intervention to improve the public health. However, in the end, the government spent a total of Rs 10799 crore against the revised outlay of Rs 10,807 crore. This year, it has revised slightly.

Pharma industry, which got a cheerful budget last year with reduction of excise duty on all pharma products from 16 per cent to 8, had nothing to cheer about as in the case of other industries this time.

The pharma department, created during the last financial year, has been allotted a total outlay of Rs 190.33 crore this year, including the Plan outlay of Rs 155.25 crore.

The interim budget has extended interest subvention of 2 per cent on pre and post shipment credit beyond March 31, 2009 for certain employment oriented sectors with a view to counter the negative impact on exports due to the global financial crisis. Along with textiles and other items, the SMEs have also been given the benefit. It may help the pharma SMEs also a bit, it is expected.