Mandaviya inaugurates 27 Greenfield Bulk Drug Park, 13 Greenfield Manufacturing Plants

Union health minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Saturday virtually inaugurated 27 greenfield bulk drug park projects and 13 greenfield manufacturing plants for medical devices here.

Inaugurating the project, he said “Medicines are an essential requirement for any society. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the dangers of supply chain getting affected, the risks of being highly dependent on imports of critical resources like bulk drugs and medical devices and its potential effects on India’s pharma and MedTech sector led to a lot of brainstorming within the Union Government. The Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme is a result of these wide-ranging discussions”

Health minister said “the PLI-I scheme of the Union Government identified 48 critical bulk drugs for manufacturing locally. The success of this inaugural scheme led the government to launch the Rs. 15,000 crore PLI-II scheme which envisaged to increase our cost competitiveness for medicines and medical products in the international market”.

Highlighting the Union Government’s efforts towards making India atmanirbhar in the field of critical medicines and active pharmaceutical ingredients (API), he said, the example of Penicillin G, a widely used drug which were locally manufactured in India until the late 1980s. Due to globalisation, the import of Penicillin G led to the closure of all such plants in India. He highlighted that the center is working on bringing back production of Penicillin G in India after three decades.