The finance minister has proposed to add 36 lifesaving drugs and medicines to the list of medicines attracting concessional customs duty of 5%.
Specified drugs and medicines under Patient Assistance Programmes run by pharmaceutical companies are fully exempt from the basic customs duty, provided the medicines are supplied free of cost to patients.
Also, 37 more medicines along with 13 new patient assistance programmes have been added to the existing list.
The government plans to add 75,000 seats for students in medical colleges over the next five years.
As a part of this objective, 10,000 seats will be added in FY26. The government will facilitate setting up of day care cancer centres in all district hospitals in the next three years with 200 centres to be established in FY26. The 2025 budget has allocated Rs 20,000 crore to implement a private sector driven research, development and innovation initiative that was announced last year in July. The BSE Healthcare Index remained largely unchanged with a tad gain of 0.1% on Saturday.