Budget 2025: Healthcare Sector Seeks GST Cut, R&D Sops, Lab Accreditation, Says Metropolis' Ameera Shah

Ahead of the Union Budget 2025, the healthcare industry expects the government to come up with several key decisions to boost growth and research in the sector. Making healthcare more accessible and affordable, mandatory accreditation of testing laboratories, reduction in GST and incentivising research and development (R&D) are some of the key factors on the budget wishlist of the healthcare industry players.

As Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is scheduled to present the Union Budget 2025 on Feb. 1 in the Parliament, Metropolis Healthcare Promoter and Executive Chairperson Ameera Shah spoke to NDTV Profit exclusively to highlight what the government should do to boost the healthcare sector in India.

“In our industry, it's very interesting. While the government has put a peg of 2.5% contribution of GDP from a healthcare perspective, we are very slowly inching up to that in every Budget. I really hope that we're able to make a bigger leap in this particular budget of FY26,” she said.

Shah mentioned that healthcare needs more attention in India, highlighting that there are a few critical decisions that the government must take in the upcoming Budget.

“Healthcare certainly needs more focus in our economy. And we certainly hope that there's more provision for investment there. There are few framework decisions which are also critical,” she said.

“One of the key focus of the government is to make healthcare more accessible and more affordable. Accessibility will happen through more expansion in the private sector and public, for which we need to create incentive schemes to be able to really go to smaller towns where affordability may be a challenge,” Shah added.

The top executive hoped for an exemption in GST on diagnostic services to reduce the burden on the consumers.

“We would also like them to sort of put in a 0% GST. Currently, our industry has all the input costs for GST and no way to offset them. So, it's actually burdening the health consumer once more. We've also talked about the government focusing on preventive health care going forward,” she said.

“To do that, currently, you have about Rs 5,000 of a tax exemption at the end of the year, which can be moved against your income. We do urge that this should be increased to Rs 10,000, because Rs 5,000 for a whole family, becomes quite challenging,” the Metropolis Healthcare executive chairperson added.

Formalising the diagnostic sector by making accreditation compulsory for testing labs is on the Budget wish list of the healthcare industry, Ameera Shah said.

“In the diagnostic sector, for example, formalising the sector by making some accreditations mandatory could be helpful, which is not there currently. It's a free for all where anybody can operate,” she mentioned.

Shah further said that boosting R&D in healthcare is “absolutely important”. 

“We have not really seen schemes yet that allow for R&D expenditures to be offset like in the pharma industry or any sort of incentives for boosting R&D, either in medtech, or in diagnostics. And we would certainly hope that there would be a change there,” she told NDTV Profit.