Rs.3,420 Cr. Outlay for Promoting Domestic Manufacturing of Medical Devices under PLI Scheme
21 December 2022: The Govt. of India is giving a push to medical equipment manufacturers in the country. Several manufacturing licenses have been issued for high-end equipment such as CT scan, MRI scan, high-end digital X-ray, digital mammography, and linear accelerator. At the same time, these high-end equipment are also imported from various countries.
Under the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) Scheme for Promoting Domestic Manufacturing of Medical Devices with a financial outlay of Rs.3,420 Cr and with the tenure from FY 2020-21 to FY 2027-28, the financial incentive is given to selected companies at the rate of 5% of incremental sales of medical devices manufactured in India for a period of five years. In total 21 applicants have been approved under the scheme.
Four segments under the scheme, cover high-end medical devices – Cancer care/Radiotherapy medical devices, Radiology & Imaging medical devices (both ionizing & non-ionizing radiation products) and Nuclear Imaging Devices, Anaesthetics & Cardio-Respiratory medical devices including Catheters of Cardio-respiratory Category & Renal Care Medical Devices, All Implants including implantable electronic devices.
It may be noted that Department of Pharmaceuticals has taken a few programmatic interventions to encourage domestic manufacturing to reduce import dependency on medical devices. These include: Under the scheme “Promotion of Medical Devices Parks”, final approval for financial assistance of Rs.100 crore each has been given to the States of Uttar Pradesh, Tamilnadu, Madhya Pradesh, and Himachal Pradesh for establishment of common facilities in their Medical Device Parks. The Parks will provide common testing and laboratory facilities/centre at one place reducing the manufacturing cost significantly and helping in creating a robust ecosystem for medical device manufacturing in the country. The first installment of Rs.30 crores has been released to each of selected States.
Under the sub-scheme “Assistance to Medical Device Industry for Common Facility Centre”, approval for a grant-in-aid of Rs. 25 crores was provided to Andhra Pradesh Medtech Zone Ltd. (AMTZ), Andhra Pradesh for establishment of a Common Facility for Superconducting magnetic coil testing and research facility.
Under the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme for Pharmaceuticals, with the tenure from FY 2020-2021 to 2028-29, five industry applicants have been selected under the scheme for in-vitro diagnostic medical devices.