Budget 2015-16 has nothing much in store for innovation and research & development in medical devices sector, which otherwise would have given momentum to ‘Make In India’ programme in this segment.

The leaders of medical devices industry finds nothing in the budget 2015-16 to push innovation and R&D for the medical devices sector in the country. Reacting to Union Budget presented by Finance Minister (FM), Arun Jaitley, Dr. GSK Velu, founder and managing director of Trivitron Group of Companies said, “While the budget has addressed several macro issues and given focus on health sector by providing disposable income in the public's hand for healthcare expenses, nothing has been done for the heavily import dependent medical devices industry which is the fourth pillar of healthcare sector like medical education, health delivery and pharmaceuticals industry.”

At present, the healthcare industry imports over Rs.27,000 crore of medical devices from other countries. Unmindful of this, Union government has put nothing specific in the current budget to push this segment up as propounded by prime minister's “Make in India" programme. “Like the defence sector medical devices sector needs specific focus and finance ministry did not even attempt to eliminate the inverse duty structure in this industry making it more import dependent now. There are no specific announcements on innovation and R&D for this sector and if this trend continues we will be importing more than Rs.50,000 crores of medical devices in the next three to four years time,” informed Dr Velu.

Other analysts from medical device industry felt that, this budget is contradicting to prime minister’s talk about the need for Make in India program particularly for the medical device industry. “There is nothing in this budget which facilitates this for domestic industry in both SME and emerging corporate segments," said an analyst.

While on the other hand, the pharma manufacturing industry feels positive and optimistic about the budget as it encourages the new entrepreneurs in this area. “In my opinion, the budget is overall a good one in terms of direction and intent. However, there are many aspects of it which will only become clearer once the details are more visible. This budget has many positives in it, such as the FMs proposals on infrastructure, monetizing of gold, and GST implementation. With the outlay for rural healthcare, coupled with the positive announcements on health insurance, we expect to see improvement in the domestic pharma industry,” said, Saumen Chakraborty president and CFO of Dr Reddy’s Laboratories.