After several years of dilly-dallying, the Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP) has finally started the process for the implementation of its ambitious project the Pharmaceutical Technology Upgradation Assistance Scheme (PTUAS) as it has now called for expression of interest (EOI) for selection of a financial institution to manage the scheme.

The PTUAS scheme is being implemented by the DoP to assist pharmaceutical medium enterprises (Mes) in the country to upgrade their units to make them WHO-GMP compliant. Under this much awaited scheme, around 500 medium scale pharmaceutical enterprises are intended to be covered through soft loans upto Rs. 4 crore per unit at a concessional rate of 5 per cent per annum.

To operationalise the scheme, the DoP approached the Expenditure Finance Committee (EFC) which suggested that a financial institution may be selected to implement the scheme under the aegis of DoP, at minimum fee to be charged as administrative charges for the services rendered and also bear the risk of non-repayment of loans if any.

The financial institution is being roped in for disbursement and management of soft loans to medium sector pharmaceutical enterprises out of a corpus fund proposed to be created by the DoP to render financial assistance under the PTUAS scheme to medium enterprises for compliance to WHO/international GMPs.

As per the initial plan of the DoP, the PTUAS scheme was to come into effect from July 1, 2010 and the date was later postponed to January 1, 2011. But, the DoP could not launch the scheme so far mainly due to objections raised by the planning commission. The planning commission's objections in this regard came in the wake of its earlier experience with a similar scheme named CLCSS which was literally rejected by the industry as the scheme had several lacunae.

According to senior officials in the DoP, the PTUAS scheme would go a long way in improving quality, efficacy and efficiency of drugs manufactured by medium enterprises. It will also strengthen the presence of medium enterprises in domestic as well as international markets given the globalised nature of pharmaceutical industry. The PTUAS scheme will also stimulate continuous technological upgradation and trigger healthy competition among the pharma MEs towards improving quality of drugs by availing soft loan assistance. It is expected that by the end of 13th Five Year Plan, all medium enterprises would have state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities conforming to WHO-GMP/ international norms.