A TECHNO-ECONOMIC NEWS MAGAZINE FOR MEDICAL PLASTICS AND PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY
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Department Of Pharmaceutical To Study Factors Affecting Competitiveness Of Indian Medical Devices In Domestic Market

Keen on pushing the interest of the medical device sector, the department of pharmaceutical (DoP) is soon planning to initiate a nationwide study to scrutinise why the domestic manufacturers are not able to get proper market opportunities in spite of having substantial export market. To gauge the factors affecting competitiveness of Indian medical consumables, DoP called a high level meeting with key stakeholders from the industry.

The focus of the meeting was to explore the reasons for losing out to competing imports and identify the roadblocks that hamper the growth of domestic sector from within. Experts state that unfair market conditions, lack of proper regulatory guidelines coupled with partial attitude that is duly focused on imports are key reasons for lack of dominance of domestic manufacturers in the country albeit having huge potential and required expertise to export to other countries.

It is understood that through this initiative the government intends to aid the industry by providing infrastructural support to the deserving companies, while tweak preferential market access and public procurement policy as per the needs of the sector to benefit the industry. Rajiv Nath, forum coordinator of Association of Indian Medical Device Industry (AIMED) informed that the industry is looking forward to be part of this initiative as it comes as a welcome move finally taken to address the concerns of the industry.

“It is high time to finally confront the reality on why Indian manufacturers are not able to get the opportunity to expand their business within the country, even when we have the expertise for the same. The government must take cognisance of the fact that unfair market practices is rampant in the country due to competition from lower cost imports of China and other countries, contributed due to low duties and 17 percent subsidy by China on Chinese exports; competition from MNCs which are either not putting any MRP or putting very high MRP as desired by corporate hospitals are some of the major factors affecting us,” stressed Nath.

He further added that proactiveness from the government to tackle these issues is the need of the hour to protect the interest of the stakeholders, who are currently suffering silently due to Centre’s indifference.

(Ref: http://www.pharmabiz.com/ArticleDetails.aspx?aid=89723&sid=1)


Government to Soon Remove Duty Anomalies in Medical Devices Sector

New Delhi: The government is working on several steps, including removing duty anomalies, to boost medical devices manufacturing sector and make it a $50-billion industry in the next five years, as per a top official.

Secretary in the Department of Pharmaceuticals V K Subburaj said that soon recommendations will be made to rectify the inverted duty structure for the growing medical devices sector.

He said the departments of health and pharmaceuticals along with the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) are working on the matter and soon they will make recommendations to the Revenue Department on the issue.

An inverted duty structure impacts domestic industry adversely as manufacturers have to pay a higher price for raw material in terms of duty, while imported finished products land at lower duty and cost lesser. “The important hurdle (which the sector is facing) is the regulatory mechanism The duty structure has to be modified. Health, DIPP and Pharma are jointly discussing the issue to finalise the recommendations as per the opinion of Mr Subburaj at a CII function.

Domestic medical devices makers have been asking the government to address this issue. “We will ensure that this deficiency gets corrected very shortly. That will set the tone for medical devices industry in the country,” he added.

Commenting on the potential of the sector, he said: “Now we have to scale it to $50 billion and to enable that, we have to take policy decisions.” Currently, the medical devices industry in India is estimated to be $5 billion annually.

The secretary also said the department is working to create a separate vertical for medical devices in the Drugs and Cosmetics Act.

“Once it becomes a $50-billion industry, I do not think we can afford to combine it with the Drugs and Cosmetics Act. There should be a separate Act for the sector. We have combined it with drugs for long and that mistake is likely to be sorted out shortly. I think very shortly we will have a separate vertical within this Act exclusively for medical devices,” Mr Subburaj said.

To give an identity to the subject, he said, the government has empowered the Pharmaceuticals Department to take the medical devices sector.

Earlier, different departments were handling different issues related with the sector, such as quality control was looked after by the Health ministry, FDI by the DIPP and export was taken care by the Commerce Ministry.

The department, he said, is also working on the issue of the preference purchase procedures.

“We are discussing with the electronics and MSME departments to see that products manufactured in India, especially made by medium and small scale sector, get preference for purchase,” he said.

(Ref: http://profit.ndtv.com/news/pharma/article-government-to-soonremove-duty-anomalies-in-medical-devices-sector-1211936)

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