The small and medium industries in the country have demanded to the Union Ministry of Small and Micro Enterprises (MSME) to make the entire medicine purchase by central and state governments and its agencies reserved for the MSMEs to revive the struggling small scale pharma units in the country.


At a meeting with the development commissioner, MSME recently, the small industries informed the government that since the government has made Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) and Good Laboratory Practices (GLP) mandatory for all pharma units in the country, quality cannot be an issue any longer. Besides, in view of Drugs Act Amendment Bill 2008 (better known as Spurious Drugs Act) in which punishment for manufacturing and marketing spurious drugs has been made cognizable and nob-bailable, quality could no longer be an impediment.


The small industries also informed the development commissioner that in case of non-supply of medicines by any small unit, there is already a penalty clause in the Act.


The development commissioner, MSME, had convened a government-industry meeting on March 23 to discuss the issue of revival of small pharma units in the country. The meeting discussed several fiscal and taxation measures to revive the small phama industries in the country. The ministry has formed two separate committees, one on quality and the other on affordability.


In the meeting, the SSIs pointed out that entire MSME was suffering owing to a defective rate of abatement whereby its SSI exemption limit is truncated to Rs.60 lakhs from Rs.1.5 crore as it was calculated on net assessed value. And then MSMEs outside the Excise Free Zone (EFZ) were at a disadvantage owing to anomalies of MRP-based excise whereby their sales were suffering as units in EFZ were thriving at the cost of others in the country.


The SSIs also sought 50 per cent subsidy on technology upgradation of their units like GMP and GLP. The industry demanded that the subsidy should be investment linked and not credit linked, as in the case of CLSS, since many units were making own arrangements for funds without borrowing from banks in view of the fact that servicing loans was a problem in view of MSMEs having been rendered unviable by changes in laws and policy during the last some years.