Strict insistence of the Mumbai Customs Office to stencil the details of packed material on the outer package of consignments for the convenience of the port officers for clearance, has caused trouble to the pharma exporters dispatching their consignments from Ports in the region, it is learnt.

At least three consignments which do not adhere the directive were stopped at the port by the customs recently, according to sources. While the insistence of stencil cutting comes handy for the port office to clear the consignments, the chances are high that the labeling norms of the destination countries would not allow stenciled packages to be accepted or the labeling on the outer package would not be clear after stenciling, fears the exporters.

The matter also came up for discussion in a recent meeting convened by the Pharmaceutical Exports Promotion Council (Pharmexcil) along with the West Zone office of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) in Mumbai to identify issues with the merchant exporters related to the reported rejection of their consignments by destination countries.

“We have received three complaints from the exporters regarding the directive of the customs office making stencil cutting mandatory for consignments. The stencil cutting would also adversely affect the exports, since it would spoil the labeling of the content and the importing countries might reject  such consignments according to their norms,” said Dr P V Appaji, executive director, Pharmexcil. The council is planning to send representations to the Ministry of Commerce and Industry and to the relevant customs offices, seeking a solution, he added.

The meeting was arranged by the council upon a directive from the Ministry of Commerce to find out whether there is an issue of rejection of consignments sent by merchant exporters due to lack of quality in packaging. The council has created a core group of merchant exporters in the region to probe the issue. However, the officials found that there are only negligible cases of rejections of drug consignments particularly from the merchant exporters in the region. However, the directive of the customs office has certainly a more adverse effect on the exporters as a whole.

The ministry directed the council to gather the merchant exporters in the region to identify issues related to outer package of consignments, based on some tip offs received by the office recently that several exported consignments are being returned because of the damage due to poor packaging. Though the CDSCO convened a meeting earlier, following the directive from the ministry, to find any such issues and to prepare a guideline to prescribe minimum standards for outer packaging for merchant exporters, the efforts were futile as few merchant exporters showed up for the meeting.