Planning Commission is likely to give the in-principle approval soon for the proposal by the Department of Pharmaceuticals to set up a dedicated greenfield Medical Devices and Equipment Park worth around Rs 350 crore near Sanand in Gujarat.

As per the proposal, submitted by the DoP after feasibility studies, the proposed cluster would be set up under the aegis of NIPER, Ahmedabad in partnership with the State government of Gujarat. “We are waiting for the approval from the Planning Commission on the proposal. We had submitted the proposal a few months back. If things go as per the plan, the construction works can start by the end of this year or early next year,” sources said.

It is expected to be the first dedicated cluster for medical devices companies and would mainly cater to the Western parts of the country. The pre-feasibility study for setting up the greenfield ‘Medical Devices and Equipment Park’ was carried out by the financial services firm, IL&FS and the projected cost was put around Rs 300-350 crore. After Gujarat government showed keen interest in the proposal, the Chemicals ministry forwarded it to the Planning Commission.

The DoP also had got a feasibility study on the medical devices sector done by the NIPER, Ahmedabad along with Frost and Sullivan, before finalising the proposal for the medical devices park. The medical devices industry offered a huge potential in the outsourcing programmes of the foreign medical devices companies from countries like Europe and United States, according to the study.

Indian medical devices manufacturing industry will benefit largely from the outsourcing activity in future. Setting up of manufacturing facility in India could provide the foreign companies an ideal location to penetrate the vastly underdeveloped Asian medical devices market, while also keeping product prices closer to those typical of the region. The study pointed out the example of the R&D facility set up by Siemens India Ltd in Bangalore in 2004 for developing user-friendly medical imaging systems.