New Delhi: Union commerce and industry minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday raised serious concerns over increasing imports of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and asked the experts and industry to work in the direction to reduce the dependence on imports.
“When we are setting up pharmaceutical and biotechnology hubs, the dependence on imported APIs worries me a lot,” she said here at the Global Biotechnology Summit here.
Ms Sitharaman said as India is a global hub of generic medicines and biotechnology centres, industry, academia and experts should work in reducing the increasing imports.
India is hugely dependent on China for import of the APIs, which are the raw materials for medicines. Indian firms imported APIs and intermediates worth nearly $3 billion in 2010-11 with China alone accounting for $1.88 billion.
The minister said both developing and developed countries are dependent on India for affordable generic medicines.
Further, the commerce ministry is requesting the states to give additional concessions in special economic zones to the pharma related units to reduce the API imports.
Talking about startups, she said the government’s action plan for the sector focuses on all kinds of startups including areas related with biotechnology, and just those from IT sector.
“We hope that 1,000 to 1,500 starts will come in another four years, who will be focusing on biotechnology,” she said adding the department of pharma is expected to launch a Rs 1,000 crore venture capital fund to help start-ups which will focus on bio-tech.
