Covishield maker hails financial aid from govt

April 20, 2021 15:42

Vaccine major Serum Institute of India (SII) on Tuesday hailed government's initiative to provide financial aid to manufacturers to ramp up production of COVID-19 vaccine in the country.

"On behalf of the vaccine industry in India, I would like to thank and applaud Shri @narendramodi Ji, @nsitharaman Ji, for your decisive policy changes and swift financial aid which will help vaccine production and distribution in India," SII CEO Adar Poonawalla said in a tweet.

In order to ramp up supplies ahead of the opening of Covid-19 vaccination to all citizens over 18 years of age, the government has approved a payment of about Rs 4,500 crore as advance to vaccine makers like Serum Institute of India (SII) and Bharat Biotech against future supplies, sources said. SII will supply 200 million doses and Bharat Biotech is to supply another 90 million doses to the government by July at a pre-agreed rate of Rs 150 per dose.

Sources said the finance ministry has relaxed rules to allow advance payment without bank guarantee to help the vaccine makers ramp up production. SII will get Rs 3,000 crore in advance and Bharat Biotech about Rs 1,500 crore.

Earlier this month, Poonawalla had said that the company would require around Rs 3,000 crore to ramp up production capacity for making vaccines for COVID-19.

Congress leader P Chidambaram said today that by liberalising the price of vaccine and not fixing a price for states at the same rate as available to Union Govt, the govt is paving the way to unhealthy price bidding and profiteering. States with limited resources will be at a considerable disadvantage.

"States already way down by shrinking GST revenues, lower tax devolution, reduced grants-in-aid & increased borrowing would've to bear this additional burden. Meanwhile, nobody knows where the thousands of crores of rupees collected under PM CARES being deployed."

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