API Park plot handover set for Mar start

Shamsul Huda | Published: December 21, 2014 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2024 06:01:00

A vital project like Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (API) Park is now poised for a belated start with handover of plots to the manufacturers of raw materials for medicines by next March, officials said.
After the commissioning of the industrial park, located at Baushia in Munshiganj district, more than Tk20 billion new investments may be made within five years in manufacturing active ingredients in synthesis process as raw materials for drugs, sector-insiders said.
Currently more than 90 per cent of the APIs (raw materials for medicines) are imported and only less than 10 per cent produced locally by some leading pharmaceutical industries.
Momenul Haq, senior vice-president of Bangladesh Pharmaceutical Industries Association (BAPI), said a large amount of investment is likely to take place in the park to produce new- generation active ingredients as per compliance with regulated market and by using latest technology.
The park is being equipped with central effluent treatment plant (CETP) as currently it is not possible for all the industries to set high-cost ETP individually on their factory premises.
According to official sources the project-implementing cost, including that of the CETP, has increased more than 22 per cent to Tk3.31billion from its earlier estimated Tk2.58 billion.
A leading pharmaceutical industry owner said after commissioning new investments for raw materials would be made by the pharmaceutical companies because of the CETP facility.
He said, "The import of active ingredients would fall at least 50 per cent in a decade and it would create new employment opportunities as well as save large amounts of foreign currencies."
The owner holds the hope that even after post-transitional era under the WTO for pharmaceuticals the API Park would play a pivotal role in making local pharmaceutical products competitive on the international market.
An official of the project-implementing authority, BSCIC, said CETP is a must for the API Park and the government is not going to set up this plant.
He said the BAPI members have decided that they would set up the CETP with their own funds.
Sources in the pharmaceutical association said there is a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between BSCIC and BAPI that the CETP would be set up at the manufacturers' cost, amountingÂ to Tk800 million.
Abdul Baset, a BSCIC official and the project's director, said the API Park was scheduled to commence in January 2008 and get completed by December 2012.
It had been planned that a total of 42 pharmaceutical industries would be set up in the 200-acre park area.
Due to financial trouble the construction work has been on hold since the scheduled implementation period expired in December 2012.
Initially, the project faced slow progress in the implementation works due to difficulties in acquiring land coupled with other problems.
Meanwhile, following cost-overrun, the estimated expenditure meant for the CETP has also substantially increased to Tk800 million from earlier estimated amount of Tk250 million.
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