The Union Commerce Ministry has okayed the industry plea to extend the time to commence operation of Pharmexcil till March 31 2004. An IDMA release today stated that the Steering Committee for the formation of Pharmexcil has succeeded in getting government support to make the council operational by April 1, 2004.

Since the pharmaceutical industry is a knowledge based industry and has unlimited scope for growth on par with information technology sector, the leading industry associations viz. IDMA, OPPI & BDMA have been pursuing the formation of Pharmexcil since 1998.

The release added that Indian pharma industry has, of late, vastly diversified and made noticeable progress in R&D activity in the field of biotechnology, discovery of new molecules, including phytochemicals, new drug dosage forms and process development.

The current annual level of exports of Indian Pharma Industry is about Rs.12,000 crore with an average growth rate of approximately 20 per cent per annum. With its newly emerging capabilities, exports are likely to touch a level of Rs.60,000 crore per annum in the next three years. While, so far exports have been essentially confined to products, now there is great potential to develop export of services too from the Indian Pharma Industry, particularly in the areas of collaborative research, contract manufacturing, providing backup facilities for Phase I and II clinical trials and consultancy.

It is in this context that the above industry associations have been pleading with the Ministry of Commerce, Government of India to set up a dedicated export promotion council for pharmaceuticals namely Pharmexcil. It is heartening that the untiring pursuit of this objective by the industry has now culminated into the Ministry of Commerce acceding to their request to set up Pharmexcil subject to industry raising a corpus fund of Rs.3 crore to ensure that the new institution will be financially independent.

Appreciating the important role the pharma industry is playing and would play in the future, the government of Andhra Pradesh has agreed to extend funds towards the corpus for Pharmexcil provided it is headquartered at Hyderabad. The Ministry of Commerce have since approved the shifting of headquarters of Pharmexcil to Hyderabad and directed that the formalities to make Pharmexcil functional should be completed latest by the said period.

A Steering Committee for Pharmexcil headed by D B Mody, past president of IDMA with Venkat Jasti, president of BDMA and Dr Ajit Dangi, director general of OPPI has already been set up and is scheduled to meet shortly to draw up an action plan to adopt the model bye laws framed by the Ministry of Commerce for all Export Promotion Institutions and complete related administrative formalities.