The Bihar Drugs & Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association (BDPMA), which has hitherto been working independently in the state with no association or affiliation with any of the pharma industry associations at national level, will be absorbed shortly by the Indian Drug Manufacturers Association (IDMA), the national body of pharma manufacturers.

With the involvement of S V Veeramani, the immediate past national president of the IDMA, newly elected national president of the association, Deepnath Roy Chowdhury had a telephonic conversation with the president of BDPMA, S Sanjiv Rai.

Later Roy Chowdhury said he would send a panel of office-bearers to Patna to meet and discuss with the industry heads and office-bearers of BDPMA. According to him, the IDMA panel will visit Bihar in the first week of next month.

Industry sources from Bihar said since there was no interest from the side of industry or of the association for becoming part of the national industry body, BDPMA, which comprises more than 100 units, did not try for membership with IDMA. However, in the national level, since the issues related to pharma industry and trade are becoming more stringent than ever, the members in the committee felt that it should work with a national level organisation, not only for their survival but for competition and growth as well.

While responding to Pharmabiz on future plans, Sanjiv Rai said the president of IDMA has assured him to absorb BDPMA as one of its members. Once it is given membership, the Bihar association will come under the state board of West Bengal IDMA. The national industry body has now eight state boards. Apart from West Bengal, the state boards include Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh & Uttarakhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana, and Tamil Nadu, Kerala, & Puducherry.

Commenting on the situation prevailing at present in Bihar, Sanjiv Rai said the state government has no specific strategy or program to develop the pharma manufacturing units in the state. If the existing units are given support for growth, the state can become self-sufficient in the total requirements of pharmaceutical products. But the government has no specific pharma policy.

“Since the state government is yet to come up with any specific strategy to encourage the pharma industry in Bihar, the local units are facing problems in terms of technical knowhow and competing with other updated activities taking place at national level. We are very much inclined to compete with national level pharma industry activities and are working day and night, but we are far behind”, said the president of BDPMA.

He said issues like FDC permission from DCGI and special tax benefit in tune with those being granted to units based at Uttaranchal, Himachal, eastern states, etc should be considered seriously in the case of Bihar also.

When asked to name some major players, Sanjiv Rai said most of the units are located in the districts of Patna, Muzaffarpur and Fatwa, and they are all coming under MSME sector. Only a few of them are developed ones. For example, Fantasy Drugs Pvt Ltd at Hajipur, Asklepios Remedies in Patna, Archem Drugs Pvt Ltd at Fatwa, Ornate Labs Pvt Ltd at Muzaffarpur and Hindustan Pharmaceuticals at Begusarai are some of the major players in Bihar.

He said though the drugs control department is supportive to pharma industry, many problems in the industry are lying overlooked.