Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: Acornerstone of this progress is the nationwide deployment of dedicated Child Marriage Prohibition Officers (CMPOs), as mandated under the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act (PCMA), 2006. The Union Budget 2026-27 marks a decisive shift in India’s approach to pharmaceuticals by placing biopharma and biologic medicines at the centre of its healthcare and manufacturing strategy.
This aligns with the Government’s vision of transforming India into a leading global biopharma industry and capturing 5 per cent of the global biopharmaceutical market share. Acknowledging the growing burden of non-communicable diseases and the increasing global reliance on biologics and biosimilars, the Budget positions biopharma as a high-value, future-facing segment critical for both public health and economic growth.
Budget proposals
The launch of Biopharma SHAKTI, a dedicated national initiative with an outlay of Rs 10,000 crore over the next five years, is aimed at strengthening India’s end-to-end ecosystem for biologics and biosimilars. The initiative is designed to support domestic development and manufacturing of high-value biopharmaceutical products and medicines, reduce import dependence, and enhance the country’s competitiveness in global biologics supply chains.
The proposed expansion and strengthening of the Biopharma-focused network through the establishment of three new national institutes of pharmaceutical education and research and the upgradation of seven existing NIPERs seeks to address the growing requirement for highly specialised human resources in biopharma research, development, manufacturing and regulation. The creation of a large-scale clinical research ecosystem, with a proposal to develop over 1,000 accredited clinical trial sites, is expected to significantly improve India’s capacity to conduct advanced clinical trials for biologics and biosimilars.
At the forefront
The other proposal is strengthening of the regulatory framework for biologics, including enhancing the capacity of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) through the induction of specialised scientific and technical personnel.
The Budget links manufacturing scale, skilled human resources, clinical research capacity and regulatory credibility into a single framework. This signals a clear intent to move India up the pharmaceutical value chain – from being a cost-efficient producer of generic medicines to a global hub for high-quality, innovation-driven biopharmaceutical products.
In recent years, medicines have increasingly moved beyond traditional chemical drugs to therapies that are developed using biology itself. This shift has brought biopharma to the forefront of modern healthcare. Biopharma, or biopharmaceuticals, refers to the part of the pharmaceutical industry that focuses on developing and manufacturing medicines using living biological systems, rather than relying solely on chemical synthesis.
Some of the most widely used modern medicines fall under biopharma, including vaccines, therapeutic proteins, biosimilars and other advanced biologic therapies. These products have become essential to public health programmes and clinical care, particularly for infectious diseases, chronic conditions and disorders where traditional drugs may be less effective.
Govt Initiatives
The Indian pharmaceutical industry is no longer limited to making low-cost generic medicines; it is increasingly investing in research and developing complex, high-value products such as biopharmaceuticals and biosimilars. The country has emerged as a global hub for affordable, high-quality medicines, ranking third in pharmaceutical production by volume and 14th by value.
Over the past several years, the Government has implemented a series of policy initiatives and schemes aimed at strengthening the biopharmaceutical sector across the value chain, from research and early-stage product development to manufacturing, innovation and commercialisation.
The initiatives focus on bringing together Government, academia, industry and start-ups. They aim to build shared infrastructure, encourage innovation, and strengthen domestic manufacturing, with the goal of making India a global biopharma and biomanufacturing hub.