Pharma industry still in dark about enhanced R&D fund

Mumbai

Finance minister P Chidambaram announced an augumentation of the Rs 150 crore pharma research and development (R&D) fund. Ironically, even though this fund had actually been proposed in the 2000-01 budget, the government’s disbursement from the fund is yet to cross the Rs 10 crore. The fund was to support the industry’s R&D initiatives.

The industry is beginning to question how will the augmentation help when the disbursement from the original fund itself is less than 7 per cent. As many as five budgets have passed since the announcement and the fund remains a non-starter. The reason is that during the past five years, the fund has changed hands from the Department of Chemicals and Petrochemicals to the Department of Science and Technology and various other departments and has now reached the Drug Development Promotion Board, a new body constituted by the government for the disbursement of the fund.

“The Rs 150-crore fund has had a roller-coaster ride, ever since it was announced in 2000-01 - first in terms of who would operate the fund. This was to be decided between the ministry of chemicals and fertiliser and the ministry of science and technology. This was followed by the issues of how the fund would be disbursed and to which companies. And now comes the issue of how much money would be made available in the first place,” an official with Wockhardt Ltd said.

According to Swati Piramal, director and chief scientific officer of Nicholas Piramal said, “The augumentation is welcome, but in the past five years, the authorities were not told which therapeutic areas would be the recipients of this fund. The industry still does not know what kind of research the R&D fund supports.”

— Financial Express