Exim Bank predicts bright future for Indian healthcare

Monday, 14 October 2002, 19:30 IST
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CHENNAI: India's Export-Import (Exim) Bank has identified the healthcare system as a sector with major export potential. To help traders gain an insight into the sector, the bank has published a 200-page book titled "Exporting Indian Healthcare" which was released in Chennai this weekend. "It is a roadmap for exporters and a second such study from the bank focusing on any one particular sector," an Exim Bank official said of the book, released at a function organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). As Tamil Nadu is seen as the major hub for the Indian traditional medicine systems siddha and ayurveda, the first copies were given to state officials. India is the only country that has two million acres of land under cultivation for herbs, said officials of Exim Bank, an apex financial institution devoted to promotion of India's foreign trade. It was time, they added, that the system of herbal medicine was quantified and strategies for exporting it were developed. The bank's book, costing 700, was a result of research under project director Vinayshil Gautam of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), New Delhi. Beginning with the evolution of ayurveda and siddha systems in India and comparing them with the popular Chinese system of ginseng, the bank publication goes on to explain the scientific basis of siddha. Exim Bank managing director T.C. Venkat Subramanian recalled how, in the 1980s, the bank had identified IT as the fastest growing sector and how right it had been. The country today exports $9 billion worth of software annually. But officials like Subramanian and executive director R.M.V. Raman cautioned that the Indian healthcare system suffered from lack of data, new products and promotion. The world market today for herbal and natural ingredient products was worth $200 billion, bank officials said. "The need is for assessment studies, properly documented," said an official. The book also gives details of the Indian government's latest policy initiatives and the institutions it has set up -- like the Medicinal Plant Board and the department of Indian System of Medicine & Homoeopathy -- which act as facilitators on the laws that govern export. Countries like the U.S., Britain, Hungary, the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, South Africa and Russia have shown interest in the ayurvedic system, the book notes. "Hungary has officially recognized it as a system of medicine and the U.K. has written to the ISM&H (health) department to include a course in some colleges," it says. Russia, Hungary, the U.S. and South Africa too want to include ayurveda courses in colleges, it adds. An ayurveda centre is being opened within the premises of the Indian mission in Moscow as a first step. There are nearly 400,000 registered ayurveda and siddha practitioners in this country, yet India occupies only two percent of the world trade in indigenous medicine while China has captured 40 percent. To correct this imbalance India needs a massive image building exercise, the bank says. World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines on traditional medicines have been included in the book, along with market share studies in the U.S., the European Union and other areas by international organizations. Bank officials recommended that domestic and international air terminals within the country have ayurveda and siddha medicine shops. While government officials cautioned against overexploitation of the biosphere for medicinal plants and called for conservation, Exim officials urged commercial farming of such herbs supported by bank loans for product development, research, documentation, database preparation and export.
Source: IANS