Govt to provide Rs 2,100 cr to NIPERs

NEW DELHI: Government would provide Rs 2,100 crore for establishing and developing six National Institutes of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPERs) in the next five year.

"The department has earmarked a budget of Rs 350 crore for each NIPER for the next five years, which would be spent on infrastructure, training, equipment, recruitment and working of the institutes," Department of Pharmaceutical Secretary Ashok Kumar told reporters here today.

Government has approved setting up of six NIPERs at Ahmedabad (Gujarat), Hyderabad (Andhra Pradesh), Hajipur (Bihar), Kolkata (West Bengal), Rae Bareli (UP) and in Guwahati (Assam).

Each NIPER would also have a separate mentor institute for overseeing the functioning of the institute and would primarily focus on disease prevalent in their regions.

These NIPERs would award masters and doctorals degrees in different streams of pharmaceutical sciences and would give more emphasis on R&D activities. The intake of students in various NIPERs would be about 200-250 each and once all institutes become functional, about 1,500 persons would be trained annually, a release said.

Besides this, there would be steering committee of 8-10 people for overseeing the functioning of these institutes.

The Department has also hired a consultant Deloitte Touche Tohmatshu Pvt Ltd to prepare a detailed project report for each NIPER to suggest the private public partnership model wherever possible and also to suggest the areas of specialisation.