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‘Medical
equipment should be fully exempted from import duty’
 Anjan
Bose, managing director, Datex-Ohmeda and chairman of
the medical equipment division of CII, feels that healthcare
in India should be given the status on par with infrastructure
sector to bring down the cost of patient care. He says exemption
of import duty on medical equipment would be the first step
in that direction. Excerpts of an interview with Nidhi
Srivastava.
What
has been your experience in the Indian market?
Structurally
the organisation is almost identical across the globe and the
challenges are more or less similar in nature. However, the
formidable Indian bureaucratic machinery poses a serious hurdle.
Even after representations to the government over the past few
years, the government has ignored the requirements of the industry
and is reluctant to assign infrastructure status to healthcare
segment. Extending this status would drastically bring down
the entire cost of patient care. For example, the import duty
on spare parts were to the tune of 380-400 per cent making maintaining
of hi-tech equipment highly expensive. If the import duty is
nil, hospitals would get the benefit of duty free imports on
spare parts making acquisition and maintenance of life saving
equipment more affordable.
Countries like Singapore and Malaysia have a much simpler
import-export procedure and are highly competitive in terms
of cost as well as efficiency. We are proposing the government
to start a pass book like system wherein each company shall
keep a pass book which can be regularly audited by the Customs
Dept to avoid any discrepancy. This will cut short bureaucratic
delays and speeding up equipment buying process.
Government should focus on the primary and secondary healthcare
and leave the tertiary care to private sector.
What is the kind of revenue you are looking at?
We don’t want to announce any specific financial targets
at this point. However, for gas pipelines and anaesthesiology,
we have a market share of more than 60 per cent and for monitors
we have a share of 25-30 per cent.
What is your product line and how is it unique?
We
have started with Medical Engineering Services (MES) which
include gas pipelines, and operation theatre equipment where
we are the undisputed leaders. In the domestic market, our
share is in the range of 50-70 per cent. We started with monitors
in 2000-01 and did some major projects. Our major focus is
still on anaesthesia and critical
care.
Datex-Ohmeda offers total solutions for operation theatres.
Our product basket also includes some leading products that
are non Datex-Ohmeda. We deal with Steris, a U.S. based company
dealing in hospital sterilisers, operation theatre tables
and lights. We also deal with Pulmonatics, another organisation
from US that has come up with a unique laptop ventilator.
It’s an extremely useful product considering
its price vis-a-vis the benefits.
What makes Datex-Ohmeda different from the other organisations?
Innovation,
which ultimately benefits both doctors and patients. We actively
involve ourselves in constant interaction with doctors to
convert their requirement into technological
features.
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