Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman unveiled the Union Budget 2022 on Tuesday, February 1. There were announcements for all the sectors in the budget.
If we talk about health, special attention has been given to mental health. Minister Sitharaman announced the establishment of 23 tele-mental health facilities around the country.
A system to prepare a digital record of the health of the citizens was also announced in the budget.
The health sector has received a 16 percent budget increase in comparison to the previous year. Despite this, people associated with the health sector are dissatisfied since the government appears to have overlooked several critical areas. The budget has also been met with dissatisfaction from those in the medical equipment industry.
Experts in the health and pharmaceutical industries say that while there was mention of a self-reliant India in the general budget, the government has done nothing new for indigenous enterprises to attain self-sufficiency in the health sector. According to Rajiv Nath, MD, Hindustan Liver and Forum Coordinator of the Association of Indian Medical Device Industry, the medical device industry in the world has progressed significantly since the advent of Covid, but India continues to import medical equipment from China, the Netherlands, Singapore, the United States, and Germany. In the last five years, these imports have increased. In the last five years, imports from China alone have surged by more than 74 percent.
According to Rajiv Nath, the Indian government discussed establishing four large medical device parks in the country last year. A fund of about 100 crores was to be allocated to each of these parks. Devices were to be created by indigenous enterprises in these parks, furthering the mission of self-reliance and Make in India, but there is nothing in this budget for the fiscal year 2022-23 that indicates the government wishes to develop the indigenous medical device manufacturing industry.
The need for medical equipment has been seen the most in the time of Covid, while there is a huge demand for these devices in the world too, but the Government of India has not taken any decision on import duty to reduce the imports of medical equipment. No intention has been shown by the government to promote make in India when it comes to the manufacturing of medical devices.
According to Nath, India’s indigenous production would not grow unless imports were minimised and exports encouraged. In the existing setting, realising the Make in India dream will be difficult. It’s important to remember that Covid isn’t over yet. In the future, medical devices may be required. In India, there are over 50 such devices on which there is no import duty, which is the primary reason for rising imports.
Some of the key areas, according to experts, that need to be addressed include a change in tariff plan, change in customs duty, reduction of 18 percent GST on medical devices to 12 percent as medical devices do not come under the list of luxury goods. Research and research work on equipment could also have been exempted.
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