Govt has no plans to control medical devices sector

Govt wants to allow market forces to decide prices of medical devices but asked industry not to extract very high margins

The government has no plans to control prices of medical devices even as it continues to expand price regulation in drugs. The government wants players in the medical devices industry to follow self-regulation and refrain from charging unseasonably high margins.

“Pricing policy is bothering both the pharmaceuticals and medical devices industries. The medical devices sector is at its infancy. Let it become a $50 billion industry. There is no need for any apprehension at this stage,” said V K Subburaj, secretary, department of pharmaceuticals. There is, however, no plan to ease the controls on pricing of drugs. Subburaj said the government wanted to allow market forces to decide prices of medical devices but asked the industry not to extract very high margins. “Many products are imported cheap and sold at ten times the price. High margins attract attention. Wherever prices are high, the industry should make it reasonable,” he said.

The government recently made the department of pharmaceuticals the nodal body for the medical devices industry. Regulatory issues will, however, continue to fall under the ministry of health, and exports and imports will be governed by the commerce ministry. The domestic medical devices market is estimated at $6.8 billion, but only one-third of it is locally manufactured. India also exports medical devices worth nearly $1 billion. Referring to the anomalies in the tax structure that act against local manufacturing of medical equipment, Subburaj said the issue was being examined at the highest level. “We hope to correct these anomalies well in time to create an ecosystem for local manufacturing,” he added.

A CII-BCG report, Medical Technology: Vision 2025, released today said several companies like GE, Polymed, BD and Terumo Penpol had ramped up investments in India and were seeing strong business results. However, for further growth, the government needs to spend more on healthcare, introduce single window regulation for manufacturing of medical devices, and provide incentives such as tax holidays and soft loans.