Govt. to launch Rs. 500 crore Pharma Technology Upgradation Fund

The central government is expected to roll out a Pharma Technology Upgradation Fund with a corpus of Rs. 500 crore. This fund will facilitate cheap loans to enterprises willing to upgrade their manufacturing area. At the same time, the Department of Pharmaceuticals is working towards establishing a venture capital fund with the same budget of Rs. 500 crore to provide cheap loans to small and marginal pharma companies planning to set up new entities.

However, the main motive behind these two proposals is to revive the pharmaceutical market of the country as well as to make medicines more affordable to citizens. According to sources privy to this step, the government for  along time felt the need to upgrade the standard of the technologies to have world-class facilities and to continue with the Make-in-India theme.

The pharma department is also planning to launch a scheme to provide financial assistance in the form of soft loans or interest subsidies to boost domestic manufacturing facilities of the said sector. Pharmaceutical parks and medical device parks are also being planned to be set up by the government.

The centre is also planning to increase the Jan Aushadi stores all across the country to 3,000 outlets. Proposals have also been made to establish a National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER) along with the private players for drug discovery. At present, there are seven such NIPERs exist in the country.

Source: ET