The Hukum Pharmaceuticals management had recently applied for dissolving the company at the Department of Industry.
The meeting led by Minister for Industry Shankar Prasad Koirala decided to let Micro Hukum Pharmaceuticals, the joint venture company, to use all the physical infrastructures built by the dissolved company on a ten-year lease. [break]
The joint venture company is to invest Rs 533 million. Altogether 55 percent share of the company is owned by Micro Labs Limited, a well-known medicine producer company of Bangalore, India and the rest is owned by Abhishek Dugad, one of the founder-member of Hukum.
Micro Hukum should also have an Initial Environment Examination before starting production and accommodate all the employees of Hukum.
It will not be allowed to extend its physical infrastructure in the premise, according to Dhruba Lal Rajbanshi, director general of the Department of Industry (DoI).
The Micro Hukum had requested the DoI for permission to operate in the premise of Hukum using the existing infrastructures, saying that it would take time to have its own infrastructure in the proposed land of Katunje, an adjacent Village Development Committee of Madhyapur.
The decision contradicts with the Board´s earlier decision to not permit any pharmaceutical companies to operate within the municipal areas of the Kathmandu Valley.
However, the Board officials maintained that the new company has been permitted to operate inside the premises of the previous pharmaceutical, using the existing infrastructures-that too on a lease for ten years.
Moreover, they added, it will merely replace the previously running company, without expanding the existing physical infrastructure inside the premises.
The officials further said it´s good to have a new joint venture company in the country as its production will help in curtailing import of medicine. Nepal has to rely on the import to meet as much as 60 percent of its total medical consumption.
Micro Hukum had got permission to establish a pharmaceutical company at Katunje in Bhaktapur under Foreign Direct investment in a joint venture in February.
In a document submitted to the DoI, Micro Hukum has stated that it will produce a number of medicines, including different tablets, ointment, liquid syrups and powders. Hukum was established some 17 years ago and was one of leading drug producers in the country.
Related story
Sushree Sampati releases ‘Hukum Baksiyos’
