Pharmaceutical units that take land at the bulk drug park in Jambusar, Bharuch district, now have a package of their own. On October 29 the state government approved a scheme offering a 10 per cent capital subsidy on eligible fixed investment, reimbursement of utility charges for up to ten years and a full refund of stamp duty and registration fees on the first land allotment, IANS reported, via Punjab Kesari. Deputy Chief Minister Harsh Sanghavi announced the scheme on social media, Gujarat First reported.
What the park pays for before a unit builds anything
The utility reimbursement is the part that distinguishes this scheme from a standard capital grant. According to the IANS report, it covers power, steam, water, effluent treatment, solid waste handling, warehousing and park maintenance, which in an API plant are recurring costs rather than one-off ones. Eligible micro, small and medium units also get an interest subsidy under the scheme. Investors may pick either this scheme or the Viksit Gujarat Industrial Policy 2026, not both, depending on which suits the project.
That choice matters because the 2026 policy already treats pharmaceuticals as a thrust sector, with higher ceilings in the less industrialised talukas that we mapped earlier this month. A large unit may find the general policy more generous on headline percentage, while a mid-sized API maker whose costs are dominated by steam and effluent treatment may prefer the park-specific refunds. Gujarat First noted that the ceilings, eligibility rules and application procedure will follow in formal guidelines, so the arithmetic cannot be done yet.
Rs 1,000 crore from the Centre, and a date that slipped
Jambusar is one of three bulk drug parks the Union government approved in principle in 2022, alongside sites in Himachal Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh. The Gujarat park covers about 2,015 acres, and the Centre agreed to fund 70 per cent of the common infrastructure cost, capped at Rs 1,000 crore, according to the Press Information Bureau release of the time. GIDC is the implementing agency, and the common facilities on its list include a common effluent treatment plant, a steam network, solvent recovery, a hazardous waste disposal site and a deep-sea discharge line.
Timelines have moved. In January 2025 the state drugs regulator told Pharmabiz the park would be ready in 2026 and that more than 20 companies had shown interest. The IANS copy on Wednesday still called it the “proposed” park, and Health Xplore put completion at March 2027. The incentive scheme arrives as GIDC starts selling plots: online applications for industrial plots at Jambusar opened on October 26 and close on November 25, Health Xplore and Entrepreneur India reported. The same window applies to GIDC’s medical device park at Nagalpar in Rajkot district.
The import problem the park is meant to dent
The stated purpose is to make active pharmaceutical ingredients, key starting materials and intermediates at home instead of buying them in. The dependence is real: NITI Aayog’s Trade Watch Quarterly in June 2026 estimated that around 65 per cent of India’s pharmaceutical supply chain relies on Chinese imports, with fermentation-based inputs the most exposed, Deccan Chronicle reported. Gujarat has the most to gain from a fix. Pharmabiz put the state’s share of India’s pharma exports at about 28 per cent, and its existing API clusters at Ankleshwar, Dahej and Vapi sit within a day’s trucking of Jambusar.
For Bharuch residents the practical questions are about jobs and water. The park’s own pitch is employment for skilled and semi-skilled workers in a largely agricultural taluka; the IANS report gave no number. The 40 million litres a day of water the park is designed to draw, and the deep-sea discharge of treated effluent 11 km offshore described by Entrepreneur India, will be the figures to watch once units start operating. None of the Wednesday announcements addressed either.
Sources: IANS via Punjab Kesari, Gujarat First, Press Information Bureau, Pharmabiz, Health Xplore, Entrepreneur India, Deccan Chronicle
This report was written with AI assistance from the publicly reported sources linked here; each fact was cross-checked against at least two of them.