The Centre is planning to set up a separate export promotion council for pharmaceutical industry and has initiated steps to close down Chemexcil, the present export promotion council for pharmaceuticals, basic chemicals and cosmetics.
According to industry sources, the new council is likely to be stationed at Hyderabad, the capital of bulk manufacturing. They said the government has already taken away the export promotional activities of some segments from Chemexcil and distributed either to other associations like Bulk Drug Manufacturers' Association (BDMA), Indian Drug Manufacturers' Association (IDMA) and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), or separate export promotion boards for different segments.
With the blessing of commerce ministry, the pharma export cell under ministry of the chemicals and fertilisers have started dedicated efforts for the promotion of pharma exports from the country.
This include a single window clearance system, collecting all export import registration procedures in all the countries and sending trade missions from India to explore new markets.
Industry sources said that recently the commerce ministry has granted Rs 24 lakh to CII to conduct a world seminar on new trends in pharma export which is supposed to be done by Chemexcil.
Similarly, all work related to pharma trade missions to foreign countries has been temporarily assigned to different association like IDMA, OPPI and FICCI and in a later stage will be transferred to the new pharma export promotion council.
Sources informed that last week, the ministry of commerce has formed a separate board of medicinal plants and has diverted all the export related activities of medicinal plants from Chemexcil to this new board.
The government has also decided to take the export related activities of agarbatti from Chemexcil and would give to board for handicrafts. Similarly, the commerce ministry is planning to give the entire castor oil-related activities to a new castor oil development board which is coming up in Gujarat. Currently, the export development works of castor oil falls under the jurisdiction of Chemexcil and the export potential of castor oil is estimated at Rs 800 crore per annum.
Confirming this development, Chemexcil officials said that, for the last few months the commerce ministry is not responding to any of the queries put forward by the council. Chemexcil is not aware about any policy changes in the industry and entire communication procedure has comes to a stand still.
It may be recalled that though the commerce ministry has asked the council to renovate its entire activities many times, the Chemexcil management has rejected all the proposal of the ministry. Since 1996, the council is also not appointed an executive director for the promotional activities and surrendered Rs 1 crore government grant back to the government which is supposed to be distributed among the member companies for their export related activities.
