New Delhi, Within six to seven months, India has become a major manufacturer of personal protective equipment (PPE) kits and even started catering to the global demand, a report said and suggested that India holds the potential to become a global hub for PPE kits.
The report by the Institute of Competitiveness points out that though India has achieved self-sufficiency in terms of localized manufacturers and production of PPE coveralls, PPE fabric, and seam tapes, it still relied on imports for procuring a critical component like seam-sealing equipment.
In order to have complete control over the end-to-end manufacturing value chains for essential medical supplies and to become a fully capable manufacturer of the highest quality PPE kits and other essential medical supplies, India needs to indigenize the production of critical equipment and machinery for essential medical supplies as well, it said.
The report, however, noted that there is still room for improvement in terms of quality, and research and development (R&D) efforts should be made for improving it.
It said that India could adopt strategies to transform into a global manufacturing hub for producing high-quality PPE kits. As per the report, India’s achievement of gaining self-sufficiency in terms of domestic supplies was an outcome of the central government’s push for indigenous production.
Moving forward, India needs to enable strong quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC) processes among all the PPE manufacturers.
It will bring more consistency into the quality of the PPEs manufactured, reduce the testing and rejection overheads post-delivery, and allow local manufacturers to scale up their production to reach not only domestic markets but also global markets, the report added.
