India To Ease Duties On Drugs

The first budget of India's new government for 1996-97, presented to Parliament late last month, retains the zero rate of duty on life-saving drugs. "I also propose to reduce the rate of duty on all other allopathics from 50% to 40%," Finance Minister P Chidambaram told Parliament.

Meantime, the setting up in principle of an Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission has been agreed by the government. The Commission will work as an autonomous body to bring out new editions of the Indian Pharmacopoeia every five years.

In 1991, the government reconstituted the Indian Pharmacopoeia Committee for the preparation of the 1996 edition. Two volumes of this have just been published in New Delhi by the Minister of State for Health, Saleem Iqbal Shervani. They contain monographs for 1,149 medical substances, including 290 new drugs, and with a total of 111 deletions.