Apollo Hospitals Managing Director Suneetha Reddy on Friday said the healthcare sector should not only be the focus of the current Budget but must also remain at the center of the economy as the country aspires to become a $5- trillion economy. 

“It is important that infrastructure is created in this (healthcare) sector. I believe 20 years ago, the government gave IT services a national priority by offering them tax holidays for 15 years, capital subsidies, etc and with that the IT sector really grew,” Reddy said adding, “healthcare deserves that position now more so because we are a nation where 70 per cent of healthcare spending is out of pocket. It is time to look at healthcare differently.”

She was delivering the keynote address at ‘Countdown to Budget 2022’ organised by The Hindu BusinessLine in association with BoB Financial, the credit card arm of Bank of Baroda and Hitachi India. The theme of the event was ‘Accelerating India’s Economic Growth’.

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Highlighting the huge demand-supply gap in hospital beds, Reddy said it is time to look at the fact that the healthcare sector needs much more investments and infrastructure help.

She said healthcare can be made more affordable through thoughtful changes in the GST regime. “It (GST) makes healthcare expensive. We do not have a set-off against the input tax so the healthcare industry is observing all these taxes and in certain cases tax rates are as high as 18 per cent. If the government can give us either zero or five percent GST, it would benefit the sector immensely,” Reddy added. 

She added that the pandemic has shown the importance of preventive healthcare and the government, by rationalising GST rates, can make insurance and healthcare spending more affordable. 

“Currently, India provides the best quality healthcare in the world at one-tenth of the cost. At Apollo, we already have patients coming from 147 countries and I believe there is still a huge opportunity in creating medical value travel. With government support, we should be able to do much more in that space,” Reddy noted. 

Pandemic challenges

She also added that India has been emerging stronger despite several waves of the pandemic and has now learnt to meet the challenges of the pandemic. 

Reddy said the current Budget must focus on three priorities namely unemployment problem, upskilling of workforce and signaling support to ideas or sectors that will drive growth in the next century.

“Clean energy, manufacturing hubs to serve the Indian industry, logistics, fintechs, e-commerce and digitally enabled services are some of the sectors that will drive growth,” Reddy said, adding, “the government has done so much in the past two years and I am sure it will continue to support these.”

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