Bangladesh drug policy may hurt Indian export

IndIia established out to boost local manufacturing of bulk drugs by announcing 2015 as the Year of APIs.


Devdiscourse news desk | Updated: 19-06-2018 13:43 IST | Created: 19-06-2018 09:51 IST
Bangladesh drug policy may hurt Indian export
Bangladesh announces a corporate holiday for API and also encourages incentives to the local manufacturing of drug ingredients.(Image Credit: Twitter)
  • Country:
  • Bangladesh
  • India

India set out to boost local manufacturing of bulk drugs by announcing 2015 as the Year of APIs, but there has been little progress on the ground.

Recently Bangladesh announced a corporate holiday for API and also encouraged incentives to the local manufacturing of drug ingredients. These steps taken by Bangladesh is to enhance pharmaceutical exports and lower the cost for domestic consumers, as in the unavailability of local API’s. Bangladesh dependency increases heavily on imports from China, South Korea, and India.

The drug makers in India also demanded the similar drug policy to accomplish self-sufficiency.

Director general of Indian Council of Medical Research V.M. Katoch formed a panel In 2013, which submitted its report in 2015. However, there has been no action on the report yet.

Leena Menghaney, head, South Asia, MSF Access campaign said “Bangladesh is putting in place a policy for the domestic production of pharmaceutical APIs—which India did in the 1970s and dismantled in the last two decades. With the backward integration of API and finished formulations production, Bangladesh could emerge as an important supplier especially for new medicines that are patented in India and cannot be supplied by Indian generic suppliers."

On adding to this Menghaney said “A number of new cancer medicines such as Dasatinib are already being generically produced by Bangladesh, even as Indian companies like Natco Pharma have had to withdraw such medicines from the Indian market because of patent enforcement proceedings,”

Noteworthy the recent report by the department of pharmaceuticals under the ministry of chemicals and fertilizers Over 60% of APIs in India are sourced from other nations and for some specific APIs, the dependence is over 90%.

According to the Pharma Export Promotion Council, India’s pharma exports grew 2.91% to $17.27 billion in 2017-18. However, experts claim that exports will be severely hit in the long run if the country does not upgrade. While Bangladesh boosts its pharmaceutical exports on the back of a flagrant waiver available to the least developed countries till 2032.

According to the B.R. Sikri, president of the Federation of Pharma Entrepreneurs said “Bangladesh is a small country compared to India. However, their presence in the global scenario in formulations as well as in API industry is phenomenal. In a short span of a couple of years, they have started exporting to more than 80 countries. If this tempo continues, it will be a big competition to India,” on adding to this

“They are able to achieve such milestones because of governmental support like China. India declared 2015 as the year of API but unfortunately in the last three years, we have not been able to do much although it is more than three years when the Dr. Katoch committee report was submitted to government,” on this whole issue  the memorandum by department of Pharmaceuticals had said “The specific areas of focus may include research and development, acquisition and commercialization, development of the industry, regulatory framework, potential impact on the industry, investments, contribution to the economy, exports, integration with value chains etc,”

Related to the same policy V.V. Krishna Reddy, president of Bulk Drugs Manufacturers Association of India said “The government needs to encourage its API industry by giving incentives to the industry. We have had a lot of discussions but unfortunately, not much has happened."

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