Bengaluru : Six mega pharma parks will be set up in India, including one in Raichur, Union Minister for Chemicals, Fertilisers and Pharmaceuticals D V Sadananda Gowda announced on Monday.

He was addressing a press conference in the city. “We are taking stock of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) available in our country. We had a detailed meeting with pharma industrialists. It is sufficient for another three months,” he said.

Pharma 2020 Mela in Ahmedabad reiterated that nobody needs to worry about a shortage of APIs, he added.

“Apart from two districts in China, other districts have started manufacturing APIs. I do concede that our country did not take it seriously in the earlier days, for the formation of API parks and pharma parks. Now we’ve planned for that. We’re going to have six mega pharma parks in various corners of the country, including one in Raichur,” Gowda said.

On shortage of masks in the wake of the Coronavirus outbreak and hiking of its prices, he said there are two faces to it. One, a black market, and two, those who’s spreading false propaganda. “I don’t think there’s a shortage of N95 masks. After media reports, we found black marketeers and everything has been resolved,” he said.

Some people may prefer only certain brands, he said. “There may be a shortage in certain brands, but practically there’s no shortage. Drug controllers have taken action,” he added.

When DH had contacted the Karnataka drug controller B T Khanapure about acting on those hiking MRPs of masks, he had said that masks are not drugs and they do not come under his purview.

The department of legal metrology is responsible, he said. The department, in turn, said it is waiting for consumers to lodge a complaint. Despite having powers to conduct surprise inspections, it has not done a single one so far, to check pharmacists selling masks.

On pointing out the same to Gowda, he said, “There’s a group of five ministers. They’re taking decisions. We’ll hold a high-level meeting and take stock of the situation.”