The Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers, Department of Pharmaceuticals, provided an update on the Performance-Linked Incentive (PLI) schemes for the pharmaceutical sector in a written reply to the Lok Sabha by Minister of State Smt. Anupriya Patel.
Under the PLI Scheme for Pharmaceuticals, which commenced its performance period in FY 2022-23, ₹6,659 crore has been disbursed out of the total financial outlay of ₹15,000 crore as of March 2026. The PLI Scheme for Bulk Drugs has seen significantly lower disbursements, with only ₹87.70 crore released from its ₹6,940 crore outlay. The implementation of bulk drug projects faced constraints including time consumed for land acquisition, environmental clearances, high utility costs, and long gestation periods for fermentation-based bulk drugs, which collectively led to delayed commissioning of projects and consequently affected incentive disbursements that are based on sales of eligible products.
The PLI Scheme for Medical Devices has disbursed ₹266.64 crore as of March 2026. The government confirmed there are no plans to reform the Medical Devices PLI scheme, including shifting from an exclusively PLI framework to a hybrid model that incorporates both Component-Linked Incentives (CLI) and PLI to attract more manufacturing companies.
The total disbursement across all three pharmaceutical sector PLI schemes amounts to ₹7,013.34 crore as of March 2026, representing the government's financial support to boost domestic manufacturing in these critical healthcare sectors.