NEW DELHI: The Centre wants to set up parks that will manufacture pharma raw materials currently imported from China, while sections within the government also want sick state-run pharma units, specialised in manufacturing active pharma ingredients, to be revived.
According to top officials, to promote domestic API manufacturing the government could lift price controls on drugs made from domestic bulk drug raw materials. India is dependant on China for some 70 per cent of its API supplies and the current Coronavirus scare, which has seen imports from China stopped, has underlined India’s supply vulnerability.
Nearly 40-odd APIs have been identified whose production the government wants to encourage, officials said. While incentives will be offered to bulk drug manufacturers to scale up their production, sections within the chemicals and fertilizer ministry want the two sick PSUs – Indian Drugs & Pharmaceuticals Ltd and Hindustan Antibiotics Ltd – to be revived instead of being sold off or shut down as was earlier planned.
"We can rope in private investors and do the job of revival or use incentives which we will anyway pay out to encourage API manufacturers coupled with sale of land banks etc. to work out a revival package," said officials.
Officials said the government has plans to set up API parks in states like Himachal Pradesh, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Assam. India imported APIs worth $2.5 billion in 2018-19 from China. The raw material feeds medicine manufactured for both the domestic market as well as India’s $19.14 billion pharma exports business.