India Proposes National List of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers

The Drug Controller Governor of India (DCGI) plans to put together an official
national list of pharmaceutical manufacturers that are licensed in India. Additionally,
the DCGI will use a software program to keep an updated computer database of
these companies. State drug controllers are going to collect information at
the state level using a common format that will later be consolidated into the
national list.

There are many challenges to this e-governance effort: (1) devising a uniform
format and software (2) preventing an overlap of information about licenses,
and (3) transferring licenses that are documented on paper. For this reason,
the Drug Consultative Committee (DCC) met in June 29 to designate a subcommittee
comprising of the Drug Controllers of Delhi, Kamataka, Kerala, and Nagaland
to arrange a format, software, and categorization of products under various
licenses.

At present, there are supposedly 10,000 drug manufacturing units in the country.
But reliable and specific information about these units are largely unknown
and unavailable. Currently, only the Gujarat FDCA (Food and Drug Control Administration)
uses e-governance for activities such as issuing sales licenses online. So far,
it has gathered information from approximately 850 manufacturers and on 80,000
product licenses.