The commerce ministry has mandated bar coding on all medicine packs meant for exports from July 1, to trace and track these medicines to its source of origin.
The move is in response to quality concerns raised against Indian drugs by some African countries.
There were also allegations raised over the authenticity of some export consignments in the recent past, raising doubts over India’s record as a low-cost, quality drug exporter.
Industry officials said the recommendation for introducing bar coding was made by the manufacturers themselves.
However, they were not clear about the extent of specifications mandated now, and hence, declined to give the financial implications of the new system.
In a public notice issued on Monday, the Directorate General of Foreign Trade stated that rule mandates all exporters of pharmaceutical products to be equipped with the technology to affix barcodes during the interim period.
The track and trace technology that should be used by drug exporters should conform to the GS-1 standards at all levels of packaging. GS-I is a global organisation that designs and implement such standards.
While primary-level packs will see incorporation of 2D bar codes on medicines at strip, vial and bottle encoding of unique product identification code, batch number, expiry date and serial number, similar details will be displayed on the secondary and tertiary (shipper or carton) using 1D or 2D barcodes.
