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Govt to soon unveil new R&D policy for pharma & medical device sector: PD Vaghela
Aug-06-2020

Secretary of Department of Pharmaceuticals, PD Vaghela has said that the central government will shortly unveil a new Research and Development (R&D) policy for pharma & medical device sector. He said the new R&D policy will seek to focus on benchmarking the R&D ecosystem, coordination among research institutes and recognising scientists. Besides, he said the government is planning to set up three National Centres of Excellence (CoE) for drugs, medical devices in the country while the National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER) will house one CoE for drug discovery.

According to Vaghela, India's pharma industry is the third largest in the world in terms of volume and stands 14th in terms of value even as it contributes 3.5 percent of the total medicines exported globally. He also indicated that the total size of pharma and related industry including medical devices in the country was at $51 billion in 2019- 20, of which 75 percent is contributed by pharmaceutical products alone.

Noting that India faces three challenges in the pharma and medical devices sectors, he said 86 percent of the total requirement of medical devices including surgical, cardiac stents and electronic gadgets are currently being imported due to cost advantage. He also noted that the other two challenges are import dependence for drug intermediates and Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (API) while the third was R&D in the healthcare and pharmaceutical sector and skilling. He added that the central government was proposing to set up three bulk drug parks, for which it provides Rs 1,000 crore to each.    

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