NATHEALTH vouches for subsidy on medical equipment import

Kolkata: Healthcare Federation of India (NATHEALTH) is demanding a reduction in the import duty of medical devices. According to NATHEALTH secretary general, Anjan Bose, the medical technology (med-tech) industry in India needs to be streamlined in order to thrive.
In an interaction with TOI, Bose said, “While building a hospital, 35%-40% of the investment is on med-tech.Hence, import duty on medical devices needs to be rationalized. Inverted duty structure and increase of import duty to the extent of 7%-8% is adding to the cost of healthcare technology and delivery." He added that the domestic demand for med-tech was relatively low. Hence, the government needed to work out ways in order to encourage the local manufacturers of healthcare devices. Bose also said that there is still a lot of work to be done to reduce complexity and lack of transparency in regulations.
On GST he said, "The GST, in its current form, will make consignment inventories of med-tech companies and distributors in customer sites taxable. Med-tech has huge involvement of consignment stocks. These stocks will get input credit upon actual sales that will create a large cash lock and administration work and thus increase cost of operations."
Regarding the growth of the med-tech industry in India, he said, "The med-tech market is expected to grow organically at about 15% to $8.5 billion by 2020. But according to our estimates, it has the potential to grow at a rate of 25% -30% to $50 billion by 2025."
NATHEALTH has put forth its concerns and suggestions to the government and is in talks with various ministries. Bose said that the apex healthcare body was very "optimistic" about the government's outlook regarding the challenges faced by the industry and was hoping for positive resolutions by the next union budget.