The union commerce ministry has asked the pharma industry to send in their representation to the government at the earliest, highlighting the key issues and challenges faced by them during the exports of the pharmaceutical products. The government will be analysing all this data collected from the industry to chart out a strategy to achieve their goal of reaching the mark of $25 billion pharma exports by March 2014.

In a move to reach across the industry, the commerce ministry ensured full support from the government in all the possible manner to drive the growth of the pharma exports further. Based on the feedback, the government is expected to prepare a plan of action that will be implemented to address the issues affecting the exporters.

To realise the strategy plan announced by the government, the Pharmaceutical Export Promotion Council of India (Pharmexcil) already had a high level meeting with the top pharma executives of the country last month. Through this meeting, the council provided a platform to the industry to come forward and deliberate over the problems faced by them during exports.

The report of the meeting, which is one of the first initiative towards getting the industries feedback on the challenges, has already been submitted for consideration. Sources informed that the government is expected to have some more meeting with the industry experts before coming into a final decision on this matter.

Highlighting some of the points that came up during this meeting, Dr P V Appaji, director general (DG), Pharmexcil informed that among the many challenges that the industry faced one that was on the top of the agenda was the industries' displeasure over the notification from the European Union (EU) demanding additional certification from the competent authority for exports.

“All the industry members equivocally expressed their concern on this matter and requested urgent government intervention to safeguard the interest of the exporters. We have duly conveyed this issue along with other challenges to the commerce ministry who has ensured full support to overcome this challenges,” Dr Appaji stated.

Other problems that were identified and presented during this meeting includes long procedural issues that is leading to unnecessary delay; adverse publicity of clinical research organisations (CROs); shortage of power and portable water supply for manufacturing pharma products.