The Hindu Business Line : `Export value-added medicinal and herbal products'

The country should leverage its overwhelming advantage in traditional knowledge on herbal medicines for churning out value-added products for the export market to capture a considerable chunk of demand abroad, the Union Minister of State for Commerce, Mr Jairam Ramesh, said.

Talking to Business Line here after taking part in a day-long round table on Medicinal herbs and products — Livelihood and trade options in Dehradun on July 7, jointly organised by the Pharmexcil and Shellac Export Promotion Council, Mr Ramesh said representatives of six States — Uttaranchal, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan and also from National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) took part in the deliberations.

Mr Ramesh said that considering the fact that China exports herbal medicines worth $10 billion a year and India's exports of this product are hardly Rs 700 crore show the vast scope for leveraging our advantage in this field to corner a larger market share. He said that out of the Rs 700 crore export of herbal medicines, only 40 per cent is value addition and 60 per cent is export of raw medicinal plant. Hence he proposed that in five years time "we should stop exporting raw medicinal plant and export only value-added products" to realise higher earnings. It was felt that if India is to depend on export of raw medicinal plant so that countries in the West add value, neither could domestic farmers be ever given better prices nor could tribal people be given more returns for collection of these medicinal plants.

Second, he said, medicinal plants are registered as a minor forest produce and "we need to move away from unsustainable exploitation of forest wealth to contract farming where there is link between the producer and the grower."

It was felt at the meeting that efforts to propagate ayurvedic and allied therapies need to be followed like China, which has sold ginseng in huge quantity by making stories.

What is worrisome is that in crops, which are grown only in India such as isabgul, psyllium, there are 848 patents in the last two decades in the USPTO and only four out of these are by Indians.

Mr Ramesh felt that given the different agencies involved in herbal medicines, concerted approach by ministries/departments, organisations/states for development of medicinal plants calls for a "coordinated road map" for development of these products on a fast track basis. He said the world over 80 per cent of population uses plant-based health care systems, as one out of four modern drugs are plant-based. He said that as India's share is less than one per cent in the $62 billion market, which is growing seven to 12 per cent per annum, all-out efforts should be made to adopt a package of best practices encompassing conservation, cultivation, quality control and standardisation and research and development for medicinal and herbals.