India re-offered the eight bulk drugs nobody bid for. The project count has not moved in eighteen months.

Three weeks ago this publication argued that eight of India's forty-one priority bulk drugs had no domestic project attached, that seven of the eight were fermentation-based, and that the Production Linked Incentive scheme had done what it was going to do for them. It also said no official document naming those eight together had been found.

That last part was wrong, and the document that disproves it changes the story rather than only the footnote. On 14 May 2025 the Department of Pharmaceuticals issued a notice, file No. 31026/16/2020-Policy, inviting applications for eleven products it described as unsubscribed or partially subscribed. All eight are on it. The correction is logged in full.

What the notice shows is that the government did not treat the gap as closed. It went back to the market a second time, on the scheme's existing terms, and told the market exactly what it was prepared to accept. That offer, and the silence that has followed it, are the subject of this brief.

What was on offer

The notice is dated 14 May 2025. Applications were due by 14 June 2025, a deadline extended to 4 July 2025 by notice No. 31026/16/2020-Policy I/11115/2025 of 16 June 2025. Across the eleven products the Department was prepared to select up to twenty-five manufacturers. The window has been shut for fifteen months.

Read the capacity column slowly, because it is the part that matters. Forty tonnes a year of Gentamycin. Fifty of Streptomycin. Sixty of Clindamycin Base. These are not the volumes of an import-substitution programme. They are the volumes of a pilot.

The terms did not move

A minimum annual capacity under this scheme is an eligibility threshold: the number an applicant has to commit to before it can apply at all. These particular numbers are not new. They are the scheme's own figures, carried over unchanged from the original product annexure — the 1,500 MT for 1,1 Cyclohexane Diacetic Acid is identical in the Department's notices of 14 June 2021 and 30 December 2022, eighteen months apart.

That is the part worth sitting with. Faced with eleven products that no one had taken up, the Department went back to the market with the same products, at the same volumes, under the same scheme. The second window is not a revised offer. It is the first offer, put again.

Two readings of that seem available to me, and I do not think the published record settles between them. The first is that the Department judged its terms sound and the absence of takers to be a matter of timing — capital cycles, a cautious year — in which case re-issuing an unchanged notice is the rational move. The second is that the terms were never the variable that mattered, and that re-issuing them was the only instrument the Department actually had. Nothing in the notice tells you which, and the Department has not said.

What can be said is what the thresholds describe, independently of whether they ever changed. Forty tonnes a year of Gentamycin. Fifty of Streptomycin. Sixty of Clindamycin Base. A firm that clears those bars has not displaced India's imports of anything; it has demonstrated that the chemistry can be run here. That may well be the sensible first objective for a fermentation product the country stopped making. But it is a different objective from the one the scheme was announced to serve, and the gap between the two is not something the published figures draw attention to.

Somebody had already walked away

One clause in the notice does more work than its length suggests. Firms that had previously been approved for one of these products and then withdrew, or had their approval cancelled for non-performance, were barred from applying again for that same product.

A rule like that is not drafted in the abstract. It exists because it happened: companies took approvals for some of these products and did not build. The 19 September brief treated the eight as products nobody had ever wanted. The more accurate picture is harder. Some were wanted, taken, and then given back.

That matters for anyone planning around these inputs, because the two situations carry different information. A product nobody bid for tells you the economics looked bad from the outside. A product somebody bid for, won, and then abandoned tells you the economics looked bad from the inside, to a firm that had examined them closely enough to apply.

Then it happened again

The second window did not end in May 2025. On 26 November 2025 the Department opened another round, this time for two products only: Meropenem, at a minimum of 4 MT a year, and Ritonavir, at 5 MT. Up to four applicants were sought for each.

Four tonnes. For a carbapenem antibiotic that hospitals hold in reserve for infections nothing else touches.

Applications ran for thirty days from 27 November 2025, and on 26 December the Department extended the deadline to 16 January 2026. That window, too, is closed.

What is not known, and the Department could end it tomorrow

Here is the gap at the centre of this brief, and it is a large one.

The Department has not published the outcome of either round. Not how many applications came in, not which products drew them, not who was selected. Cumulative figures have moved — the scheme was reported at 48 approved projects in March 2026 and at 55 selected applicants, including 20 MSMEs, by June 2026 — but those totals are not broken out by round or by product, so they cannot tell you whether a single one of these eleven found a taker.

So the honest position on the eight is narrower than either of the last two briefs implied. They were not quietly abandoned; they were re-offered, twice. Whether either offer found a taker is not a question the published record answers.

This is the second time in three weeks that the reporting problem here has not been a shortage of policy but a shortage of reconciliation. The government publishes lists, tranches and aggregates. It does not publish the one table that would make any of it checkable: which of the forty-one are covered today, by whom, at what capacity.

What this changes for a buyer

If you source any of these eleven, the practical reading has shifted since 19 September, and shifted in a direction that is easy to over-read.

There is now evidence the government is still actively trying on these products, which the last brief did not credit. There is no evidence that the trying has produced a plant. And the capacity thresholds in the scheme are small enough that even a successful round would not change your sourcing position much: the forty tonnes a year of Gentamycin an applicant must commit to does not displace a supply chain.

The planning horizon I would hold to is the one from three weeks ago, with one amendment. Do not expect these products to be domestically supplied at volume this decade. Do expect small Indian capacity to appear in one or two of them, possibly already approved and unannounced, because that is the scale the scheme's own thresholds describe.

If you have applied in either round, or looked at them and declined, I would like to hear what the numbers looked like from where you sat. As always, corrections and disagreements are published.

Sources. Department of Pharmaceuticals notice dated 14 May 2025, File No. 31026/16/2020-Policy, inviting applications for eleven unsubscribed or partially subscribed products, with up to 25 applicants sought and the per-product minimum capacities and applicant caps in the table above; applications due 14 June 2025, extended to 4 July 2025 by notice No. 31026/16/2020-Policy I/11115/2025 of 16 June 2025. Pharmexcil circular PXL/HO/Cir-018/2025-26 of 19 May 2025, carrying the same notice to members. Department of Pharmaceuticals notice of 26 November 2025 for Meropenem (4 MT) and Ritonavir (5 MT), up to four applicants each; applications open thirty days from 27 November 2025, extended on 26 December 2025 to 16 January 2026. Scheme aggregates: Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers, 10 March 2026 (48 approved projects); government statements reported June 2026 (55 selected applicants, including 20 MSMEs). End-use attributions and target segments as recorded in this publication's tracker.

Note on confidence. The notices, dates, file numbers, capacities and applicant caps are from the notices and the Pharmexcil circular listed above. The minimum capacities are the scheme's own thresholds, unchanged from the original product annexure — the 1,500 MT for CDA, for instance, is identical in the Department's notices of 14 June 2021 and 30 December 2022. Nothing in the May 2025 round was offered on easier terms than the first time, and an earlier version of this brief said otherwise. The outcome of both rounds is genuinely unknown to me: I have found no published list of applicants or selections for either, and the argument above rests on the terms of the offers and on the absence of any published result, not on their outcomes. The reading of what the eligibility bar on previously-approved firms implies is my analysis and I would welcome correction, particularly from anyone who applied. Whether any of the eleven now has an approved project is the single question that would most change this brief, and I am still asking the Department for it.

Feedstock India does not provide investment advice and makes no recommendation regarding any security.