Budget 2024: Some relief for cancer patients and increased PLI allocation for pharma

The Union Budget 2024 has limited provisions impacting the pharma and healthcare sectors. It has provided relief to cancer patients by fully exempting three more medicines from custom duties. These drugs are Trastuzumab Deruxtecan, Osimertinib and Durvalumab - drugs manufactured and sold by AstraZeneca. The stock of Astrazeneca India closed over 13% today.

The budget has also reduced the basic custom duty on x-ray tubes and flat panel detectors for use in medical x-ray machines under the phased manufacturing programme to synchronise them with domestic capacity addition. This is a positive development for the medical devices industry. The budget has also increased the allocation of the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme for the pharma industry from Rs 1,200 crore last year to Rs 2,143 crore.