Budget relief on the label: Govt proposes to drop duty on rare disease drugs

Mumbai: The budget proposal to exempt seven drugs used to treat rare diseases has been hailed by the industry and patient groups as a significant step that would provide relief and lower costs of prohibitively expensive lifesaving drugs. Others, however, said the duty cuts alone would not be sufficient to make the drugs affordable to the majority of the Indian population.

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in her budget speech, "I also propose to add seven more rare diseases for the purposes of exempting import duties on personal imports of drugs, medicines and food for special medical purposes (FSMP) used in their treatment."

These drugs are for conditions such as congenital hyperinsulinemia hypoglycaemia, familial homozygous hypercholesterolemia, alpha mannosidosis, primary hyperoxaluria, cystinosis, hereditary angioedema and primary immune deficiency disorders.


Apart from the drugs for rare diseases, the budget proposal includes full duty waivers on 17 anti-cancer drugs.

Over the past three years, the government has been gradually removing customs duty on many patented and imported anti-cancer and rare disease drugs that are sold by multinational drug makers such as Roche, GSK, Sanofi and Novartis. In 2024, three drugs from AstraZeneca were given the basic customs duty (BCD) exemption. Last year, 36 medicines were given duty exemption and 37 more drugs were added to the list.

Archana Vashisht Panda, co-founder, Cure SMA (spinal muscular atrophy) Foundation of India said her organisation welcomes the move but added that the proposal does not change the base price of high-cost treatment of rare diseases. "It does provide significant relief to individual patients buying out of pocket medicines, as it reduces the cost burden by 10-15%," she said.