As part of the annual exercise of holding consultations with the different export promotion councils, the Director General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) under the Ministry of Commerce will hold a sectoral review meeting with the Pharmaceutical Export Promotion Council this weekend and assess the export performance of the pharma sector.

DGFT Dr Anup K Pujari will review the exports of the sector on July 8 and gather suggestions from the industry to bring in amendments to the foreign trade policy and procedures. The council had been already asked to submit the suggestions pertaining to the amendment of the policy with a view to enhance exports and reduce transaction costs, sources said.

Based on the inputs gathered by the Pharmexcil, the DGFT will discuss the suggestions by the industry in detail and forward the same to the Commerce Ministry for making changes in the policy. The Pharmexcil is reported to have already collected the inputs regarding the rationale of the suggestions, effect on exports, impact on the industry, transaction costs and time from the industry members in this regard.

The need for close working between the DGFT and the drugs regulator, new scheme of advanced authorisation, earlier scheme of positive value addition,  and further expansion of the duty credit on FOB under the under Market Linked Focus Products Scrip (MLFPS) in the policy are among the things likely to be taken up during the meeting.

Considering the huge potential for the creams and lotions in the overseas market, the Pharmexcil will also take up the demand of the industry to provide DEPB rate for creams and lotions for exports made from India, for which all the exporters are already claiming packing materials used in such products, sources said.

According to the scheme of advanced authorisation, the companies have to make sure that the product meant for exports should have at least 15 per cent value addition from whatever value it has when the Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) or the raw material was imported, to get the benefit of the Advance Authorisation Scheme for imports of bulk drugs. An Advance Authorisation is issued to allow duty free import of inputs, which are physically incorporated in export product (making normal allowance for wastage). The industry wants it to be replaced by the earlier provisions of positive value addition.