New Delhi: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced a full exemption from basic customs duty (BCD) for 36 live-saving drugs to treat cancer, rare diseases, and other chronic conditions in her Budget speech Saturday, a move that is likely to benefit lakhs of patients.
She also announced that six critical drugs would attract concessional customs duty of five percent and full exemption and concessional duty would respectively apply to bulk drugs required to manufacture these medicines.
Drugs and medicines not under exemption – which are not registered in India but are imported by patients individually – generally attract basic customs duties of 10 percent, with some categories of life-saving drugs or vaccines getting a concessional rate of five percent.
Most of these drugs, which have shown remarkable clinical outcomes and dramatically improve quality of life, are prohibitively expensive, with costs ranging from several lakhs to crores per year. This often forces patients and their families to resort to measures like crowd-funding to fund their treatment.
The government is yet to notify the list of drugs now fully exempted from BCD, but a list accessed by ThePrint shows it includes targeted and immunotherapy anticancer drugs asciminib, daratumumab, teclistamab, and mepolizumab, and the medicine to treat spinal muscular atrophy risdiplam and high blood cholesterol drug inclisiran.
As of now, risdiplam can cost between Rs 72 lakh to Rs 1.86 crore per year.
Some other drugs in the list include amivantamab, alectinib, obinutuzumab, polatuzumab vedotin, entrectinib, atezolizumab, spesolimab, velaglucerase alpha, agalsidase alfa, rurioctocog Aapha pegol, and idursulfase.
Sitharaman also announced that 37 more medicines have been added in the list of medicines which when offered to patients through the Patient Assistance Programme (PAP) by global pharma companies would attract no basic custom duty.
So far, specified drugs and medicines under PAP run by pharmaceutical companies are fully exempt from BCD, provided the medicines are supplied free of cost to patients.
Through PAP, many global drugmakers offer life-saving drugs for free in order to aid patients and in some cases, patients get a few dosages free if they pay for a specified number of doses.
The latest initiative would go a long way in making cancer care more affordable in the country, said Abhay Soi, chairman and managing director of Max healthcare and president, NATHEALTH- a large network of healthcare providers.
According to government estimates, nearly 15 lakh new cancer cases are detected every year in the country while eight lakh people succumb to it.
Less than three percent of cancer patients have access to the promising immunotherapy treatment, mainly due to exorbitant costs, a landmark study by researchers at Mumbai-based Tata Memorial Centre had found in 2022.
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Building on existing concessions
In the Union Budget last year, the government had announced BCD waiver on three anticancer therapies by trastuzumab deruxtecan, osimertinib and durvalumab by British-Swedish pharma giant AstraZeneca.
Previously, in March 2023, the finance ministry had announced there would be no basic customs duties on pembrolizumab (Keytruda) – used to treat 17 types of malignancies – by US-based pharma giant Merck.
In addition, an exemption from customs duties was also granted to other drugs or food for special medical purposes imported for personal use for treating rare diseases as listed under the National Policy for Rare Diseases, 2021.
Prior to this, there was an exemption on custom duties for specified drugs used in treating only one rare disease — spinal muscular atrophy or Duchenne muscular dystrophy.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)
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