As part of confidence building measure between the industry and the government, the Pharmaceuticals Export Promotion Council of India (Pharmexcil) recently organised a high level interactive session in Mumbai for the benefit of the industry. It presented a platform for all the stakeholders to discuss and represent their key issues to the top government officials in the country.

During the event, the representatives from the government departments like DCGI, DGFT, customs, ADC, EXIM, ECGC and State FDA shared their experiences and expectations from industry with the stakeholders along with clearing their doubts and grievances simultaneously. All the participants had a brainstorming session with the representatives on the issues faced by the SME's in the country, which is hampering the clearance and dispatch of export goods.

In the presentation given by Raghuveer Kini, additional executive director, Pharmexcil, he pointed out that the global pharma industry is expected to be 1.1 trillion by 2014, whereas, global generics market is expected to be 375 to 400 billion by 2014 providing a huge opportunity for the Indian exporters.  He informed that to exploit this opportunity, the government has plans to bring in new incentives for the industry to increase the exports from India.

S Prahalathan, general manager, Exim Bank stressed that Exim Bank has greater interest in the development of pharma sector and is open for newer ideas. In his presentation he mentioned some of the recent investment opportunities and other ventures that Exim Bank has entered with respect to healthcare sector.

According to Vinit Kumar, chief commissioner of customs, zone 3, events like this is of utmost importance as it will help in bridging the gap between the industry and the government helping in improving the service quality which will be beneficial for both the industry as well as the country. However he did suggest that in future such meetings should ensure involvement of the ground level officers as well since they will be able to understand and answer the industries' query more promptly as they usually do the field work directly which involves direct meeting with the industry.

Shobha Chari from the ADC's office pointed out that for better delivery of services it is essential that there is better understanding between the industry and the regulatory authorities. She said that they are open to have more of such collaborative meetings with the industry as it will help in solving any problems that the industry has. However she added, “The entire clearance procedure depends on compliance, so we urge all the industry members to do self policing as well rather than just wait for the regulators to point out to keep the compliance level high.”

Prasad, chief commissioner from Port, stressed that the government is supportive of the export initiatives taken by the exporters and urged the exporters to consider the port authorities as trade facilitators rather than just revenue collectors. Further he pointed out that all the senior officers at the port office has an open door policy to all the grievances of the exporters and ensured them to expect a response for the problem within a week's time from the time of reporting.

Others present at the session were P R Uttarwar joint commissioner, Maharashtra FDA, Dr Kavita Gupta, additional DGFT, Gautam Das, senior vice president, Citibank India and representatives from Pharmexcil Nipun Jain, Ashutosh Gupta, Bhavin Mehta, etc to name a few.