The Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP)'s efforts to  extend the Credit Linked Capital Subsidy Scheme (CLCSS) to upgrade the units to meet the GLP norms have come a cropper so far as the proposal is yet to be cleared by the planning commission.   In the meantime, the Good Laboratory Practices (GLP) has already come into force in the country way back on November 1 last year making it mandatory for all pharma units to upgrade their laboratories as per the GLP norms.

Senior officials in the DoP said that the proposal is still stuck with the planning commission and the department cannot do anything without the final nod of the commission.

Earlier in October last year, the DoP had in-principle decided to extend the CLCSS scheme for the upgradation of laboratories as per the GLP norms set by the union health ministry.  A decision to extend to the CLCSS scheme to the GLP was taken by the DoP at a meeting between the industry and the senior DoP officials held on October 22 last year.  

Acting further on the issue, the DoP had in fact written to various industry associations asking them to provide a list of equipments that can be included for assistance under the CLCSS scheme. Later, the industry submitted a long list of around 100 equipments for which the industry needs assistance from the government for upgrading their units as per the GLP norms.

The extension of the CLCSS scheme, which was originally launched by the DoP for Schedule M implementation, to the GLP will be a big help to the small pharma units in the country, as the small players are not in a financial position to comply the GLP norms set by the government on their own.

Due to the extremely poor response from the industry due to its unfriendly clauses, the DoP was seriously contemplating last year to roll back this much publicised CLCSS scheme.  But the DoP later decided to extend the jinxed CLCSS scheme to the GLP on industry's demand.