Even after four years since it was first proposed, the Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP)'s ambitious project the Pharmaceutical Technology Upgradation Assistance Scheme (PTUAS) is still in limbo, thanks to the planning commission's lack of interest in the scheme which was intended to assist the medium pharma companies to upgrade their units to WHO-GMP compliant.

According to sources, even though the DoP has been making several proactive measures in the past to revive the much-needed project, which as per its initial plan was to come into effect from July 1, 2010, the planning commission is not showing any keen interest to commence the project. The planning commission's objections on this project 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, sources said.

Ever since the scheme was proposed way back in early 2010, the department has been sending the proposal to the planning commission for its final nod. But the scheme appears to have jinxed as it could not find favour with the planning commission so far, leaving the medium pharma companies, who are in dire need of government assistance to upgrade their units, in the lurch.

In fact, on the directive of the planning commission, SIDBI was appointed last year as the nodal agency to disburse the loan. As per the proposal, SIDBI will provide need based soft loan to pharma MEs at concessional rate of five per cent per annum and proposed Rs.500 crore interest free corpus fund to be kept with them for disbursement of loan to 250 MEs at the rate of Rs.2. crore per unit.

Sources said that the PTUAS scheme would have gone a long way in improving quality, efficacy and efficiency of drugs manufactured by medium enterprises in the country. The scheme was meant to strengthen the presence of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in domestic as well as international markets given the globalised nature of the 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.