Ministry of Chemicals & Fertilizers, Department of Pharmaceuticals on 9th May, 2023, announced the scheme for “Assistance to Medical Device Clusters for Common Facilities (AMD-CF)”

Mr. Rajiv Nath, Forum Coordinator of Association of Indian Medical Device Industry (AiMeD) applauding Department of Pharmaceuticals for the announcement of the Assistance to Medical Devices Clusters said “Excellent! It’s a great start! This is in line with the 4th Strategic Component of Building Infrastructure as defined in recently announced National Medical Devices 2023 Policy.

The Niti Aayog and the DoP had listed a few factors that were leading to a 10-15% disability factor to be globally competitive and one of these was lack of adequate infrastructure.

While Medical Devices Parks as planned clusters with shared common manufacturing & testing or warehousing & clearing facilities were being encouraged to help reduce the CAPEX (capital expenditure) of manufacturers, it was also important to strengthen the existing manufacturing Natural clusters that existed in different parts of the country eg. the Delhi NCR cluster is traditionally strong in medical disposables, surgical instruments, orthopaedic implants and IVD Reagents.

Similarly the Gujarat based Ahmedabad- Vadodara- Surat belt is traditionally strong in Disposables and Coronary & Orthopaedic Implants, the Mumbai- Pune Belt is traditionally strong in IVD (Diagnostics) Reagents & Instruments, the Bangalore cluster is strong in Medical Electronics , the Chennai cluster is strong in Intraocular Implants and Electronics Instruments , the Trivandrum Coastal belt is traditionally strong in Surgical Rubber latex gloves and components, Jalandhar & Kolkata clusters were at one time very strong in stainless steel surgical and dental instruments.

It’s important to build on the existing skills and knowledge pool and help make these manufacturing units located in these clusters be more competitive by allowing expansion with minimal CAPEX by sharing capital expenditure of new facilities that are commonly used but not giving any manufacturer any technical strategic advantage. This is important so that Manufacturing units are not uprooted from existing natural clusters and migrated to planned clusters coming up in Medical Devices parks to remain competitive. We do not want history to be repeated of uprooting of pharma units from Delhi to Baddi or Haridwar to avail Tax and Power subsidies.

“We hope for speedy implementation of this component of NMD 2023 Policy that proposes a subsidy of 70% of the project cost up to maximum Rs 5 Crore per clusters common facility which could be a testing laboratory common to that technology or a supporting sterilisation facility or product prototype development centre or an ETP plant etc. For example, FFP2 Masks (commonly referred to as N95 masks) needs a test laboratory that can cost a few lacs for each factory but in Covid times manufacturers were allowed sharing of these facilities until they put up their own, now hopefully they can explore this avenue and not be burdened by cost of lab as they struggle to survive in a falling demand market.” Added Mr. Nath.

“We thank the Honourable Prime Minister & The Minister of Chemical & Fertiliser & Health as well as the Department of Pharmaceuticals in drafting and coming out with this notification which hopefully will be availed in many states to make an Atmanirbhar Bharat that not only helps its own citizens but the world access affordable high quality and safe medical devices.” Mr. Nath further added.