Department of Pharmaceuticals, Ministry of Chemicals & Fertilizers, Govt of India is planning to roll out a series of initiatives under the banner of Schemes for ‘Strengthening Pharmaceuticals Industry’ (SPI). Keeping in view the strategic role of medium and small sized enterprises (MSMEs), who provide important forward and backward linkages to the industry, and also keeping in view that MSMEs tend to grow in clusters, these schemes shall address the issues of technology upgradation at both unit level and cluster level.

The government shall be incentivising the intending MSME units going in for acquire Schedule M certification or WHO GMP Certification through the sub-scheme Pharmaceuticals Industry Technology Upgradation Assistance Scheme (PTUAS). The MSME unit shall have the option to choose from either Capital subsidy or Interest subvention.

At the cluster level, the sub-scheme ‘Assistance to Pharmaceuticals Industry for Common Facilities’ (APICF) envisages supporting the creation of common facilities like testing labs, common effluent treatment plants and other such common facilities by providing government support in the form of a capital grant to the extent of up to 70 per cent subject to a ceiling of a maximum of Rs 20 crore. The third sub-scheme proposes to conduct a series of awareness programmes, conduct sectoral studies and organise similar such programmes to generate soft inputs for policy advocacy.