Even as the National Biodiversity Board is going ahead with its plan for implementing the ‘access and benefit sharing’ (ABS) levying system, the drug manufacturers’ wing of the Ayurveda Medical Association of India (AMAI) wants that ABS should be collected from the medicinal plants cultivators/traders rather than manufacturers of drugs.

The medicinal plant farmers or traders of raw drugs are the real beneficiaries of the biodiversity at the primary level. They are doing business in large scale and making huge profit. So, they should be brought under the provisions of ABS Act and the small scale drug manufacturers should be exempted from the purview of ABS.

Talking to Pharmabiz, chairman of the manufacturing wing of the AMAI, Dr  P K Haridas said, “We are not against implementing ABS, but the small scale manufacturers should be exempted from its purview. Primarily the beneficiaries of the biodiversity are the raw material traders. Secondly the big manufacturing companies which have more than Rs. 5 crore turnover are making huge profits out of utilizing the natural resources. So, benefit sharing should be collected from them.”

AMAI urges the government to exclude those GMP certified companies which have the turnover upto Rs. 25 lakh per month from ABS purview. “All the units are struggling for their existence and they are running on credit. Additional expenses will become severe burden for them”, Dr Haridas pointed out. Similarly, according to him, doctors who are preparing medicines to supply to their patients should also be exempted from the benefit sharing scheme.

Dr. Haridas says that vaidyas and hakkims who are practicing indigenous medicines are exempted from giving the ABS amount in the Biodiversity Act section 7. This provision should be extended to all the qualified Ayurveda doctors who prepare medicines for their own practice.
 
According to him, the manufacturers now encounter several problems such as finding out suitable market for their products, raw material shortage, labour problem, cost of materials, etc. In this context, additional levy of tax in the form of ABS will adversely affect the industry’s existence. So levying amount towards ABS from small scale manufacturers should be exempted.
 
All the manufacturing units are burdened with a lot of licences for running a manufacturing unit like local body licence, drug licence, GMP certificate, L 2 licence from excise department for production of Asava and Arrishtas, SP6 and SP7 licences for storage and selling,  licence from factories and boilers, legal metrology, sales tax, labour registration, pollution control licence, food licence, etc. In addition to these, one more licence from the biodiversity board will only increase the burden of the poor manufacturers.