Aimed to provide clarification and guidance for the implementation of barcoding in the industry, the Pharmaceuticals Export Promotion Council of India (Pharmexcil) will organise an interactive meeting on May 13, 2016 in Mumbai.

Sudhanshu Pandey, joint secretary, ministry of commerce; A K Sinha, director, NIC; senior representatives from GS1; and senior officials from other related government departments would be attending the meeting to discuss and understand the issues of industry and also to provide clarifications.

Dr P V Appaji, director general of Pharmexcil, says “There were many queries from members seeking clarifications and requests for exemptions from barcoding, etc. While we, at Pharmexcil, tried our best to provide required clarifications, we thought it would be better an interactive meeting among all stakeholders would help the members.”

He further says, “We will be discussing all the issues related barcoding. It would be a more of expert sharing guideline for the implementation of barcoding. We will also discuss on how many companies have implemented the bar coding rule so far, issues faced by the industry in the implementation of barcoding, grant of exemptions and clarification in loading of data.”

With prior approval of the government, Pharmexcil has been authorized to grant exemptions to the companies from implementing barcoding in cases where the importing country has its own mandate for barcoding or serialization.  To avail such exemptions from bar coding prescribed by the Government of India, the exporters are given the option to move an application to the Pharmexcil, clearly specifying the nature of such an exemption in the interest of the exports from the country.

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 while non-SSI exporters have been asked to implement the track and trace rule from April 01, 2016.

Pharmexcil has urged the senior executives from the concerned departments like packing, production, regulatory etc., to attend the meeting and get all the queries clarified.