Andhra Pradesh likely to set up medical devices park

Andhra Pradesh government has proposed to develop a dedicated industrial park for the manufacture of medical devices in the state.

The decision to set up a medical devices park in a 200 acre area was taken at a tripartite meeting involving state and Central government officials apart from the industry representatives in the presence of chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu, according to Rajiv Nath, coordinator of Association of Indian Medical Device Manufacturers(AIMED).

The park will have a common manufacturing facility center to act as a hub for SMEs and will create an ecosystem for high end medical device manufacturing aimed at import substitution as well as export opportunities, according to the industry body.

Indian medical device business is worth over Rs 60,000 crore while the country was spending around $ 4 billion towards import bills for this segment with 80% dependency on high-end medical devices, it said.

The Centre was working towards addressing the issue of inverted duty structure, which is stunting the growth of medical devices industry and also provide preferential market access to boost domestic manufacturing, according to the industry body. The Centre would also come out with a draft policy on medical devices sector, it stated.