The Gujarat Food and Drug Control Administration (FDCA) has approved layout designs of 150 pharmaceutical companies including the major ones being of American medical technology provider Abbott, Israel based Teva, Japanese company Otsuka Pharmaceutical and Baxter among others from July 2017 onwards towards attracting foreign investments and as part ease of doing business.

The manufacturing units include APIs, formulations and medical device units. Since July 2017, Gujarat has witnessed an upswing in foreign and domestic players  taking interest in setting up manufacturing bases in the country and accelerate Make in India campaign.

Gujarat government is also awaiting a favourable policy on bulk drugs and medical devices as the centre is mulling over to frame an exclusive policy on the same. Medical devices manufacturing is too capital intensive for individual manufacturers to invest upon. Therefore, a manufacturing park for medical devices at Sanand is also being planned towards making a giant leap in this direction.

In the current scenario, it is also easier and timely for the pharma companies to start their operations smoothly without much hiccups as Gujarat government has revised its time line for grant of manufacturing licenses to 60 days from the earlier stipulated time line of 120 days.

Revision of timeliness for grant of manufacturing licenses has been a major initiative of the government as part of Pharma Vision 2020 under the Right of Citizens to Services for speedy issuance of licenses.

A National Centre for Medical Devices (NCMD) in Ahmedabad is also being developed  to nurture innovators and industry.

A large number of pharmaceutical companies which had to shut down their production facilities in the northern part of the country in the event of expiry of tax holidays granted during 2001-02 have also got approvals for their plant layout designs which is a major boost to the domestic pharma industry.

Over 4000 manufacturing units are located across the state in four large clusters with 5 Special Economic Zones in an area of over 1500 hectares. The state today has 255 WHO certified manufacturing units with 23 MHRA certified, 24 TGA certified, 15 EU certified and 16 PICS certified units. Besides this, it boasts of 158 formulation units and 97 bulk drug units. It has 40 per cent of CROs and 40 per cent of CRAMS companies.