Budget 2012: Eliminate 30% duty on Imported Equipments for a Period of 5-10 years, says FICCI Close.

NEW DELHI: FICCI in its pre-budget memorandum has given the following recommendations for the Biotechnology industry

Large scale Monoclonal Anti bodies (mAb) plants such as 5000 L or more in scale are expensive to setup as most equipments that go into setting up them are imported and not available by local manufacturers in India. Being large they are also more expensive to run. Yet, setting them up is critical if the industry has to become competitive with the rest of the world where scales are critical for not only success but even for getting business. FICCI would like to submit following benefits that can be provided by the government to promote the development of large scale mAb facilities - a scale at least equal to or more than 5000 L :-

>> Import Duty on Equipments - It would be appropriate that for a period of 5 to 10 years these manufacturing plants should be treated like R&D as ultimately setting up these plants like R&D is going to provide long term benefit to industry and the country in building critical skills, infrastructure and capacities that would bring global business to India for years to come. It is submitted that 30% duty on imported equipments should be eliminated for a period of 5 to 10 years to allow companies to build large scale manufacturing plants, like continuous centrifuges, control systems of large scale cell culture bioreactors, large scale protein purification skids, agitators for large scale bioreactors; Quality Control equipments like CZE, CD, MALDI, HPLCs, RT-PCR machines etc.

>> Import Duty on critical Consumables - The industry uses a large number of consumables that need to be imported for taking manufacturing batches. These include filters such as depth filters, cross-flow filtration cassettes, cross-flow filtration skids, flow transfer panels, sterile control valves, measurement devices such as flow and level measurement devices, etc. it is submitted that duty on these items be eliminated for a period of 5 to 10 years so that the industry gets promoted like R&D.

Long term soft loans - Large biotech plants may be supported with long term soft loans with low interest rates (~3%) and with a moratorium of 3 years or so.

Source : economictimes.indiatimes.com