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Medical devices industry urges Centre to set up core committee to act on task force proposals
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Suja Nair Shirodkar
May 30 , 2015
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The medical devices industry has demanded the Central government to set
up a core committee consisting of joint secretaries from the commerce
ministry, ministry of health, department of pharmaceuticals (DoP) and
DIPP. The main aim behind this demand is to ensure that these
officials from the core committee will act as the drivers to finally
implement the recommendations of the task force. A delegation of the
medical device industry recently met DoP secretary in this connection.
Experts
from the industry state that they have been forced to take this steps
as there has been no initiative by the government to act upon the task
force recommendations. Apart from this, they also insisted that these
recommendations need to be approved by the cabinet so that the
ministries responsible to take a call on these recommendations can
finally put their act together.
It is important to note that
cabinet approval is not essential, however, Rajiv Nath, forum
coordinator of AIMED, insisted that the industry as a whole is
persistent for the same as it will bring in some responsibility within
the respective ministries.
"The industry which has been
struggling for many years in the country due to unfavorable market
conditions, felt optimistic following the release of the task force
recommendations. However, today we seriously question whether the
government is truly interested in addressing the issues affecting the
growth of the industry. Far from acting upon it they are not even coming
forth to hear upon the industry's representation on this," Nath
lamented.
He insisted that existence of a core committee with
proper representation from stakeholders is important to ensure that the
leadership is active on issue based agenda than mere lip service.
The
task force recommendations had come as a huge reprieve to the industry,
as it has touched based with some of the pertinent issues faced by the
sector. Medical device industry has been demanding withdrawal of
concessional duty on imports to support domestic manufacturing in the
country, as this tax structure has been negatively affecting the
interest of domestic manufacturers. Similarly they have also been
fighting for appropriate regulations for the sector for addressing
issues promptly, along with setting up of separate department for
medical devices under the ministry of healthcare products or ministry of
life sciences.
Nath said that apart from this, the Centre should
also take requisite steps to enforce maximum retail price (MRP) on
units packs to ensure that the consumers rights are protected and that
they are not fleeced by the MNCs. Industry is also insistent on
reviewing the foreign direct investment (FDI) policy, as they strongly
feel that to protect the interest of the domestic player it is essential
to allow only greenfield projects.
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