Aiming to address woes of the exporters on a fast track basis, the Pharmaceuticals Export Promotion Council of India (Pharmexcil) has urged the commerce ministry to push for more high level interaction between the stakeholders, Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) and Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT). The Council stressed that since 90 per cent of the problems faced by the exporters stem from either regulatory or trade related complications, it is only fair to intensify the meetings to boost their confidence.

This demand comes in the wake of growing incidence of discontent among the stakeholders over the lack of opportunity to deliberate on important issues with the drug regulatory and the trade body. Industry strongly feels that there is an urgent need to escalate the number of interactive sessions between the government agencies and the industry on point to pint agendas to expedite their issues. They fear that the delay in doing so will negatively impact the exports from the country.

Apart from that Pharmexcil is also planning to highlight other issues that have been plaguing the industry in recent times, with special reference to growing concern over product registration. It is understood that the exporters have been increasingly finding it difficult to financially cope with the huge product registration fees in some overseas market especially in the light of long delay in getting product registered, i.e. 3 to 4 years.

Dr P V Appaji, director general, Pharmexcil pointed out that many exporters, mainly those from the small and medium enterprises feel that it is becoming difficult for them to deal with the high fees of the same and has urged urgent intervention from the government on this issue. The Council also plans to press upon the issues of financial services, CST, excise duty, issues in duty on neutralisation scheme, which basically deals with compensation on duty suffered on imports etc among other.

“We want to assure the exporters that we will take all possible measures to address these issues of the exporters without any delay. Ever since the inception of the Council which is completing 10 years of services this month, we have been doubling our efforts to boost the confidence of the exporters with great initiative. Going in these lines we will make sure that all these issues of the exporters are duly addressed at the earliest,” Dr Appaji added.