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The Union commerce and industry ministry has revised the Market Access Initiative (MAI) Scheme and amended some of its guidelines and enhanced the ceiling amount to be reimbursed for the Indian exporters from the earlier existing limit of Rs.50 lakh per annum to Rs.2 crore at present.
Ravi Uday Bhaskar, Director General of Pharmexcil, while informing this to Pharmabiz said that the central government has brought in certain amendments to the earlier MAI scheme and enhanced the annual ceiling with additional guidelines to accommodate more components for reimbursement of expenditure incurred by Indian exporters. “With an aim to encourage pharma exports the central government had introduced MAI scheme. Earlier this scheme was confined to only smaller and medium firms, however by raising the annual ceiling it has tried to accommodate more exporting companies under its preview,” informed the Director General.
As part of its new revision guidelines, the Commerce Ministry has added plant inspection charges for pharmaceutical products as eligible for funding assistance under MAI, and has raised the ceiling to Rs.2 crore a year per exporter from the present Rs.50 lakh. According to the new guidelines, any exporting company can claim reimbursement of charges incurred towards statutory compliance on a 50:50 sharing basis up to a maximum amount of Rs.2 crore in a year. “Irrespective of size, any pharmaceutical company that exports its products can claim reimbursement as per the revised guidelines,” said Uday Bhaskar.
As the pharma companies are incurring costs at various levels right from the inspections fees by the visiting international regulating agencies, fees for product approvals, expenditure for getting quality certification, and incurring costs for data generation, data evaluation and testing charges for exporting products, the central government has in its new revised scheme has included all these components and exporters can claim reimbursements from the government under the MAI scheme.
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