New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi Thursday laid the foundation stone for the construction of a bulk drug park in Himachal Pradesh's Una. The location, one of three such parks in the country, will see mass production of bulk drugs, also referred to as Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients or APIs.
APIs are the main substances in drugs responsible for the health benefit they are consumed for. For instance, in a pain relief tablet, acetaminophen is the API. India's requirement for raw pharmaceutical materials, a large portion of which is currently met through imports from China, is expected to get substantially reduced through the drug parks.
Minister of State for Chemicals and Fertilizers, Bhagwanth Khuba said in a written statement in Lok Sabha in April 2022 that most of the imports were 'economic considerations', adding, however, that China "is one of the largest producers of KSMs and API in the world."
There were 58 APIs, for which the country's dependency on imports from China varied "from 50% to 100%", the minister noted. Parallelly, data from the Pharma ministry shows that in 2020-2021, the total imports of bulk drugs and drug intermediates to India were 3.90 lakh metric tonnes worth Rs 28,529 crore of which Chinese imports were estimated to be about Rs 19,403 crore (68.01 percent).
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Bulk Drugs, according to a 2020 release by the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers, "accounted for 63% of the total pharmaceutical imports in the country during 2018-19". Subsequently, an 'in-principal approval' was given by the ministry on September 1 this year to start working towards the three-drug parks.
While the park in Una, built over an area of 1402.44 acres in Haroli Tehsil and financially backed 90 per cent by the Centre, is one such location. The other two are situated in Jambusar Tehsil in Gujarat's Bharuch district, and K.P. Puram and Kodhada of Thondagi Mandal of East Godavari District in Andhra Pradesh.
"The Department of Pharmaceuticals has conveyed in-principle approval to the proposals of the three States Viz, Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh under the Scheme for “Promotion of Bulk Drug Parks”, a key initiative to support the Bulk Drugs manufacturing in the country," the statement said.
The Government strives to minimize the country’s dependence on imports and to give a fillip to indigenous manufacturing. In order to make the country self-reliant in APIs and drug intermediates, the Department of Pharmaceuticals is implementing various schemes and one of the key interventions is the Scheme for Bulk Drug Parks, it further noted.
