Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP), under Ministry of Chemicals & Fertilizers, Government of India, has announced the scheme for “Assistance to Medical Device Clusters for Common Facilities (AMD-CF)”.

This scheme aims to strengthen Medical Device clusters by providing financial assistance and to strengthen and / or establish more testing laboratories for Medical Devices to improve quality and sustainable growth.

For Common Infrastructure Facilities (CIF) for the Medical Device (MD) clusters, the limit of support will be 70% of the approved project cost or Rs 20 crore, whichever is less, as per the approval of Scheme Steering Committee (SSC).

In the case of Himalayan States and States in the North East Region, the grant-in-aid would be Rs 20 crore per cluster or 90% of the project cost
of the CIF, whichever is less.

While Medical Devices Parks as planned clusters with shared common manufacturing & testing or warehousing & clearing facilities were being encouraged to help reduce the CAPEX (capital expenditure) of manufacturers, it is also important to strengthen the existing manufacturing natural clusters that existed in different parts of the country.

"FFP2 Masks (commonly referred to as N95 masks) needs a test laboratory that can cost a few lacs for each factory but in Covid times manufacturers were allowed sharing of these facilities until they put up their own. Now hopefully they can explore this avenue and not be burdened by cost of lab as they struggle to survive in a falling demand market”, said Rajiv Nath, Forum Coordinator of Association of Indian Medical Device Industry (AiMeD).