Shri Pratap Chandra Sarangi, Hon’ble Minister of State, Government of India for MSME, has inaugurated Odisha’s First Pharmaceutical Common Facility Centre (CFC) here on Sunday.
The Common Facility Centre, established in the Mancheswar Industrial Area in the outskirts of the city, will be responsible for the training as well as testing facility for all the pharmaceutical units in the state.
As a two-storied building, the common facility centre is set up under the MSE-CDP in association with the state MSME department and the Utkal Pharmaceuticals Manufacturers Association (UPMA) with an approximate cost of ₹ 2.93 crore.
This CFC carried laboratories in order to test pharma products and its raw materials, finish products and packing materials. It will also provide training to pharmaceutical students as well as employees of pharma units.
According to a member of UPMA, “The CFC will be quite helpful for students, because now they don’t need to head outside Odisha in order to get training on testing pharmaceutical products.”
On the other hand, Shree Sarangi stated that, “This Common Facility Centre is the finest initiative towards the Aatmanirbhar Bharat campaign of the Centre. Now the pharma firms will not forward their product to other states for the quality testing. The CFC will help ensure the quality of the pharma products, and will also be involved in order to generate employment.”
Shree Sarangi stated that the centre is focusing to enhance the production of the pharma industries of the nation and will help making the nation self-reliant. “Around a total of ten clusters will arise in the state after grabbing the approval. It will be helpful for Odisha in the future,” Shree Sarangi added.
While taking part in the carried out inaugural ceremony, Aparajita Sarangi, MP of Bhubaneswar urged the Union minister in order to establish a cluster for Pahal Rasagola in the twin city. She also asked him for the establishment of an automobile cluster in the capital city of Odisha and upgradation of the Chandaka industrial estate.
According to Ashok Patnaik, chief coordinator of the CFC, “There are around 46 pharma units, which are manufacturing capsules, tablets, syrups, powder, surgical goods, disinfectant, and other devices. “We had been focusing in order to establish this common facility centre since the year of 2011 to 12, but we’ve not succeeded due to land as well as certain other issues. Eventually, we’re blissful that it saw the light of the day,” Mr. Patnaik added.
He delivered his words that a small pharma unit cannot set up its own advanced testing facility by paying out an exceedingly large amount of money. “Hence, the entire existing units were forwarding their products to other places (states) in order to go through the advance testing. It was a cumbersome process to forward the samples and wait for a report. The lateness in order to get the report was adversely affecting product delivery. But now it is solved,” said Mr. Patnaik.
Apart from this, the pharmaceutical cluster, Odisha has a rice bran cluster in the Bargarh and cashew cluster in the Ganjam district.
Reference: