Structural and fiscal changes needed in "Make in India" policy for affordable healthcare

"What we're discussing privately and publicly, is a budget which is a blueprint for the future which creates jobs, which educates our children, which provides affordable healthcare for all Indians. Affordable healthcare is possible if we make in India, for the 1.2 billion people, what we need. To achieve this, the "make in India" policy should make necessary structural and fiscal changes to enable Indian Medical Device and IVD Industry to compete with well-entrenched MNCs in the Indian Market which is worth Billions of Dollars. The changes made in the duty structure for the medical devices are welcome but it does not address the problems faced by the Indian IVD Industry. The current duty structure for IVD industry encourage the import of IVD reagents, it does not encourage domestic manufacturing.

The value of import is estimated to be thousand of crores in IVD Diagnostics Category, and there is absolutely no rationale to have such huge import dependence in this segment as inputs/parent industry for IVD Reagents is Pharmaceutical Industry.

If we make "manufacturing attractive" by bringing the different customs code numbers into one category "In Vitro Diagnostics Reagents' with finished goods at a duty of 29 per cent and raw materials/components import only by licensed manufactures at 2.5 per cent duty (On actual user condition) then the Manufacturing will become viable in this segment. We hope the budget will address this issue ".