The ministry of small scale industries (SSI) is planning to initiate consultations with the small scale drug sector to understand the implications of the changes that are taking place in the excise and customs duty front. The SSI sector, reeling under closure threat due to loss of competitiveness resulting from the union finance ministry's notification to assess excise duty on drug MRP, is to utilize this opportunity to build up their case before the Central Government.

The office of the Development Commissioner (SSI) is known to have called for a meeting on February 28 to discuss all the issues arising out of changes in excise and customs duties. The decision of the SSI ministry is part of its move to hold wide ranging consultations with various stakeholders in the small-scale drug manufacturing sector to assist them tide over the threats arising out of globalization and liberalization of Indian economy.

The ministry's attempt is to review the current status of SSIs vis-à-vis the emerging global threats and fine-tune its reservation policies to ensure continued presence and sustained growth of SSI sector in the country. The meeting would also discuss about the entries on organic chemicals, drugs intermediates, other chemicals and chemical products in the list of items reserved for manufacture in SSI sector. It should be noted that the SSI drug sector had sought the intervention of the government to bring in the drugs that enjoy unreasonable trade margin under SSI reserved list to bring down the MRP of those drugs considerably.