Keeping in view the extremely poor response from the industry even to the tweaked Credit Linked Capital Subsidy Scheme (CLCSS) which the government introduced last year, the Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP) is seriously considering to remove the adverse stipulations in the scheme which have made the scheme unpopular among the industry.


According to sources, the tweaked CLCSS scheme, introduced by the government to financially assist the small and medium units to upgrade their units as per GMP norms, failed to cut much ice with the industry mainly due to the clause pertaining to the submission of last three years balance sheet showing profit to the company. The DoP is considering to remove such unfriendly clauses, among others, from the CLCSS scheme to make the scheme further industry-friendly, sources said.


Besides, the DoP will once again in association with industry associations organize workshops in different locations across the country to spread awareness about the need to upgrade the units to meet the GMP norms and the availability of the CLCSS scheme for this purpose. Representatives of banks/financial institutions along with regulatory officials will also be called to participate in such workshops in order to sort out problems of loan disbursement and other related problems being faced by SSI units.


In fact, the DoP had earlier organized nine workshops in this regard in different cities where there are concentration of pharma industry. However, response from the industry was not very encouraging due to several lacunae in the scheme.


The CLCSS scheme was introduced by the government to financially assist the small and medium units to upgrade as per GMP norms. But, there were few takers for the CLCSS scheme due to several complicated procedures which the SSI units found it difficult to follow. Subsequently, the scheme was withdrawn by the planning commission citing the reason of poor response.


After the failure of the CLCSS scheme and in view of the outcry for financial assistance from the SSIs for upgrading their units, the DoP mooted another scheme called Pharmaceutical Technology Upgradation Fund (PTUF). But, the Rs.560 crore PTUF scheme met with a premature death as the planning commission turned down the scheme on the ground that since the government has already started a scheme called CLCSS for the purpose of technology upgradation of SSI units, there was no need to launch another scheme for the same purpose.


Instead of introducing the PTUF scheme, the planning commission asked the DoP to make CLCSS more industry-friendly. After several rounds of meeting with concerned ministries, the DoP finally came out with a tweaked CLCSS scheme last year. But even after all these exercises, the SSIs are finding it difficult to get the required financial assistance from the government through this scheme as several features of the scheme are still not industry friendly.