The Hindu Business Line : Meet to discuss pharma R&D fund utilisation

HOW to make best use of the Rs 150-crore fund for undertaking research and development (R&D) in the drugs and pharmaceutical sector, which the Union Finance Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, promised to further hike in phases in the Union Budget for 2005-06?

This would be the single most important question that would be addressed by representatives of the pharma industry, research scientists and the Union Ministries concerned.

The meeting will be in Hyderabad on April 10, according to officials of the Ministry of Science and Technology, the key ministry expected to operationalise the fund.

The Secretary, Department of Science and Technology (DST), Prof V.S. Ramamurthy; the Director-General, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Dr R.A. Mashelkar; the Secretary, Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Dr M. K. Bhan, and officials from the Union Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilisers would take part, they told Business Line. From the Indian drug industry, representatives from companies such as Ranbaxy, Dr Reddy's, Cipla and Wockhardt are expected, while from the emerging biotech sector, Shantha Biotechnics and Bharat Biotech will be participating.

This time, the pharma R&D fund will be a grant-in-aid and not a corpus fund as proposed earlier.

The thrust of the meeting will be on how to use the fund for spurring R&D and strengthening Indian companies.

Joint research projects between the industry and research institutes, funding, intellectual property rights post January 1, 2005, composition of committees to process proposals and disbursal of funds would be core issues for discussion.

Though the pharma R&D fund with a corpus of Rs 150 crore for five years was announced by the then Finance Minister, Mr Yashwant Sinha, during Budget 2000-01, it remained largely a non-starter, with several issues not getting resolved and expert committees and Task Forces suggesting mechanisms.

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page