Exemption of Customs duty on Imported Drugs

                                            Sashi Tharoor, MP from Trivandrum mentioned about a young couple who approached him to save the life of their daughter who was suffering from cancer. The parents imported a drug for their child which was stuck at Mumbai airport due to the failure in GST payment of about Rs.7 lakh, which they could not afford. They had already scrounged, saved, borrowed and crowdfunded money to raise the fund for the medicine, and the additional payment was too heavy for them. The medicine was urgent that they could not delay the process since it was perishable and condition of the child becoming worse. So, they contacted him for the removal of customs duty. Tharoor directly connected to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharam mentioning about the seriousness of the issue and finally the Chairman of the Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs, Vivek Johri granted the exemption for the Medicines or special medical purposes (FSMP) instead of ‘drugs or medicines’.

                                               This appreciable move benefited several patients and they are expected to save spending's on duty to import life-saving drugs. As per estimations child weighing 10Kg, the annual cost of some rare diseases will be 10 lakh or may be more than 1 crore per year, especially when the treatment was for the lifetime and the increase in price over the time and age. In this case, an exemption in cost results in substantial cost savings.

                                                “The drugs or food for special purposes” are to treat rare diseases and these diseases must be mentioned in the National Policy for Rare Diseases 2021.Certain exemptions have already applied to specified  drugs for the treatment of spinal muscular atrophy or Duchenne muscular dystrophy.   In addition to that the government fully exempted Pembrolizumab (Keytruda), a Merck cancer drug from the basic custom duty. Life-saving drugs such as Zolgensma and Viltepso.

                                                Earlier, medicines had  a basic customs duty of 10% and some lifesaving drugs or vaccines has a rate of 5% and now these are completely Exempt from Customs duty enabling cost savings and relief to the patients and their beloved ones.