The Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP) is seriously considering to enhance the disbursement limit under the Credit Linked Capital Subsidy Scheme (CLCSS) from Rs.1 crore at present to Rs.2 crore and also to enhance the subsidy under this scheme to 25 per cent from the present 15 per cent.


According to sources, the DoP is presently engaged in preparing a proposal in this regard and will soon finalise it, which will be submitted to the planning commission for its final nod. The planning commission had earlier asked the DoP to prepare its proposals for the 12th Five Year Plan. Under the CLCSS scheme at present, 15 per cent capital subsidy is provided up to a loan of Rs.1 crore as per the guidelines of the scheme.


The DoP's action in this regard comes in the wake of long pending demand from the industry that the amount of Rs.1 crore was not adequate considering the nature of pharmaceutical industry in the country. Sources said that the senior officials in the DoP have already indicated that the CLCSS will be further extended and its scope will be widened to cover machinery and equipments for further upgrading of the facilities of Schedule M compliant units, for GLP and for getting GMP as per WHO guidelines.


Meanwhile, the DoP has asked the industry to submit a list of at least 100 companies which are genuinely interested in the scheme so as to take the issue forward.


The DoP is skeptical about the success of the scheme because at one point of time last year the department was seriously contemplating to roll back the scheme due to the extremely poor response from the industry. The DoP had last year introduced the tweaked CLCSS scheme to financially assist the SSI units to upgrade their units as per GMP norms.


After tweaking the CLCSS scheme to make it industry-friendly as per the direction of the planning commission, the DoP was engaged in aggressive marketing of the scheme. The top officials of the DoP and the Ministry of Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSME) had toured different parts of the country to popularize the scheme. The DoP held several workshops in different parts of the country where there are concentration of pharma SSI units to popularize the scheme.


Despite all its efforts, the CLCSS scheme failed to make any inroad as there are still some hurdles in the scheme like the provision of submitting three years balance sheet showing profits.