Enraged over the state health ministry's refusal to reduce the
eligibility criteria for participating in drug purchase tenders for
pharma companies from Rs.35 crore to the earlier level of Rs.3
crore even after the department of pharmaceuticals' advisory in this
regard, the pharma manufacturers in Haryana will further intensify
their efforts to get their demands met.

As a first step, a
delegation of Haryana chapter of the SPIC, led by its president Vinod
Gutpa, will soon meet the state chief secretary to apprise him of the
problems being faced by the small and medium pharma units in the state
due to the state health ministry's action in which it had some time
back raised the annual turnover criterion for participating in drug
purchase tenders from Rs.3 crore to Rs.35
crore for the purpose of putting an end to supply of substandard
medicines by weeding out unscrupulous manufacturers from bidding for
government supply.

The Haryana government's order virtually
disqualified the small and medium pharma companies from participating
in the tenders for supplying medicines to the state government
departments. Since then, the small and medium pharma units in the state
have been running from pillar to post to to reduce the eligibility
criteria from Rs.35 crore to the earlier level of Rs.3 crore.

As
the issue lingered on without any fruitful results, the Haryana chapter
of the SPIC had sought DoP's intervention to resolve the crisis.

The
DoP, on its part, had sent an advisory to Haryana chief secretary
Urvashi Gulati on March 31 this year and a reminder on April 23, asking
the state government to amend the eligibility criteria for
participating in drug purchase tenders for pharma companies as per
earlier levels on the ground that such hike in annual turnover
requirement suddenly would very much harm the growth of almost all of
SS1 and medium units as a criteria of more than Rs.35 crore turnover are generally fulfilled by the MNCs or large companies only.

But,
the state government did not pay much heed to the DoP advisory and the
eligibility criteria for participating in drug purchase tenders for
pharma companies remains at Rs.35 crore.

The
DoP in its advisory had countered the Haryana government's plea on
quality matters and said that 40 per cent of pharmaceutical production
by value in India is done by the SSI pharma companies on job-work basis
on behalf of the large pharma companies or MNCs. This indicates that
these SSI pharma units are capable of producing quality medicines at
reasonable and competitive prices.