Ministry okays 9 medical devices projects

The Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilisers has approved nine projects, including those from Siemens Healthcare and Wipro GE Healthcare, for production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme in medical devices, which the government announced last year, an official statement said on Thursday.

The PLI scheme, which has a total financial outlay of ₹3,420 crore, is basically intended to reduce the sector’s heavy dependence on imports. India’s domestic medical devices market in 2019-20 was ₹75,611 crore of which imports were worth ₹41,412 crore. While electronics and equipment accounted for 56 per cent of imports, followed by consumables and disposables which accounted for 18 per cent and surgical equipment which constituted 10 per cent of total medical devices import.

Project categories

The projects cleared belong to four broad categories such as cancer care/radiotherapy, radiology and imaging medical devices, anesthetics and cardio-respiratory medical devices and implants including implantable electronic devices.

The PLI scheme is expected to boost domestic manufacturing by attracting large-scale investment. In 2019-20, the foreign investment in medical devices sector grew by 98 per cent to ₹2,196 crore over ₹1,108 crore in the previous year.

According to the statement, the setting up of these plants will lead to a total committed investment of ₹729.63 crore by the companies and will generate over 2,300 jobs. The commercial production is projected to commence from April next year and the PLI disbursal by the government over the five years period would be up to a maximum of ₹121 crore per applicant.

The government hoped that these plants will make the country self-reliant to a large extent in the specified target segments in the medical devices sector. The government is planning to take up pending application under the PLI scheme for medical devices sector by the current month-end.