Parl Panel Asks Dept Of Pharmaceuticals To Explore Alternative Funding Ways To Set Up New NIPERs

A Parliamentary panel on Monday asked the Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP) to explore alternative ways of funding, including contribution from state governments, to set up five new National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPERs) in the country. The Standing Committee on Chemicals and Fertilisers said it is constrained to note that the proposal to set up five new NIPERs in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Maharashtra is still on paper without any concrete action to set them up. The DoP had asked the Expenditure Finance Committee (EFC) to allocate Rs 4,300 crore for existing seven NIPERs and additional five NIPERs for the next five years. However, EFC has earmarked only Rs 1,500 crore for NIPERs with the rider that this allocation should be utilised only for the existing seven NIPERs. In this regard, the DoP now proposed to explore alternative ways of funding these NIPERs, it added.

The committee noted that the existing seven NIPERs were hardly sufficient to meet the requirements of the country in the field of pharmaceutical education and research. Further, the panel strongly recommended that all necessary steps should be taken by the DoP for the early setting up of five new NIPERs. "In this regard, a fresh proposal may be submitted to EFC for reconsideration of their decision and the concern expressed by this committee may be conveyed to them. "The DoP may also explore alternate ways of funding these NIPERs, including financial contribution by both the union and the concerned state governments so that these five NIPERs are also developed and completed in a time bound manner," the committee stated. Besides, the panel expressed concerns over the fact that NIPERs have only published 602 research publications as on February, 15 2022, against the target of 900 publications for 2021-22. "Similarly, only 13 patents have been filed/ granted against the target of 45 for the year. ..The committee, therefore, recommends that the DoP should regularly monitor the performance of NIPERs ," it said. A gross budgetary allocation of Rs 2,244.15 crore has been made for the DoP at Budget Estimate (BE) stage of 2022-23 against the outlay of Rs 10,383.25 crore proposed by the department for the year.         

In comparison, the gross budgetary allocation for the 2021-22 stood at Rs 470.41 crore against the proposed outlay of Rs 2,600.52 crore. "Unlike previous years, this year the hands of the department have been strengthened with the requisite amount of budgetary allocation by the Ministry of Finance. Now the department has to prove its mettle through effective implementation of all its development schemes," it said. In this regard, the committee recommended that an annual action plan with monthly achievable targets should be chalked out by the DoP in respect of all the developmental schemes for which requisite amount of budgetary allocation has been made.

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