Pharmexcil to form expert forum to provide guidance on implementation of track and trace rule
The Pharmaceuticals Export Promotion Council of India (Pharmexcil) will soon form an expert forum to provide guidance to the exporters on the implementation of track and trace rule.
The forum will consist of representatives from GS1, National Informatics Centre (NIC), Industry, Pharmexcil and some vendors will also be part of the forum. The issues faced by the exporters over the implementation of track and trace rule will be addressed and will also be shared with the other members.
After being authorized to examine the exemption applications on barcoding, the Council is also planning to come up with the online programme which will help the companies to submit their applications online so that it reduces the time of the exporters.
Recently, the Council had organised an interactive meeting in Mumbai to discuss the issues identified with the implementation of barcoding. The meeting was attended by the Joint Secretary of Department of Commerce, General Manager of GS1, NIC, director general of Pharmexcil along with 80 to 85 pharma companies' representatives.
PV Appaji, director general of Pharmexcil informed that companies are implementing the said rule and there was no major issues faced by them. They want some more time for the implementation. Merchant exporters need government's help to cope up with the requirements. Joint secretary clarified that some financial aid is under the consideration of the government. The participants were satisfied with the guidance given by GS1 and NIC. The technical issues were addressed by NIC.
The Council decided to hold the interactive meeting as there were many queries received from members seeking clarifications and requests for exemptions from barcoding, etc.
The non-SSI exporters have been asked to implement the track and trace rule from April 1, 2016, while the small scale exporters were exempted from aggregation of parent-child relation between secondary and tertiary packings and uploading the same in Drug Authentication and Verification Application (DAVA) portal up to March 31, 2017.