Indian industry expresses concerns over draft Pesticides Management Bill

Date:12-02-2020

The Indian agrochemicals industry has expressed concerns over the draft Pesticides Management Bill 2020, such as the need for a time-bound, predictable, stable and transparent process for registration of products, which need to be addressed immediately by the government before the bill is passed.

Addressing the media, R.G. Agarwal, Group Chairman, Dhanuka Agritech Ltd, and Chairman, FICCI sub-committee on Crop Protection Chemicals, highlighted the issues on data protection, and said: "This is a huge sectoral and industry concern and we feel it needs an urgent addressal in the bill. If we have goals to make India ‘Aatmanirbhar', the PMB20 will need to walk the talk and incorporate certain elements which may be vital to our success."

Salil Singhal, Chairman, PI Industries,said, "Stewardship on modern crop protection molecules should be inherent part of registration process. What is now urgently needed is reform in the regulatory framework pertaining to agrochemicals which must focus on pro-actively promote introduction of new molecules."

K.C Ravi, Chief Sustainable officer, Syngenta, said, "The Pesticide Management Bill 2020 is a great opportunity to bring in a predictable progressive science based legislation in place of the age old Insecticide Act of 1968. However, provisions like criminalization of offences, regulatory provisions like reregistration's will affect ease of doing business as well as restrict new molecule introductions so necessary for the farmers in an extremely complex environment and pest pressures."

Gunavanta Patil, General Secretary of All India Kisan Coordination Committee, said, "We need modern technology and government should create an amicable environment for this. Further he added to reduce GST on Pesticides to 5 Percent from current 18 per cent".

A statement said protection of regulatory data (PRD) encourages innovators to discover, protect, register and produce new solutions. In addition to manufacturing and R&D capabilities, this ensures India's position as an investor hub.

The benefits which will accrue from PRD include accelerated introduction of newer and safer crop protection products (CPP), ensure proper product use through stewardship, protecting sensitive proprietary know-how (impurity profile and product composition) from disclosure to prevent unfair commercial use, increasing agricultural exports, setting-up of R&D facilities in India, outsourcing studies/data generation to Indian research institutes, giving employment to Indian scientists and engineers. PRD will help farmers grow more and better food by getting solutions to new invasive pests, disease, weeds, to which the existing pesticides have developed resistance, and the farmer needs new solutions.

Top experts also stressed on modern farm management in India by encouraging R&D, innovation, application of New Age solutions and adoption of innovative technologies.