Threat of over dependence on China, warns Sridhar
India needs to be a World leader for not just Generic formulations but APIs (active pharmaceutical ingredients) too, according to S Sridhar, Chair, FICCI Pharmaceuticals Committee and MD, Pfizer.
India’s pharmaceutical import dependence on China, nearly 70% by value, has become a significant threat to the local healthcare manufacturing and global supply chain, Sridhar warned in a message welcoming the Government’s decision on Bulk Drug Parks.
While Indian pharma companies over years have climbed up the value chain to focus on value-added formulations, but this over dependence on China has increased the threat to the nation’s health security as some of these critical and complex APIs are crucial to address India’s growing disease burden.
India should not look at these Bulk Drug Parks only for Domestic requirement. China became big supplier because of scale which looked into both domestic and export requirement, he pointed out.
“Domestic (market) will not give scale and is always exposed to cost and pricing pressures. With this new policy initiative, the Government must look at incentivising the manufacturing of the critical 54 APIs which were recently restricted for exports,” he said on 22 Mar 2020.
He called on the Government and the Industry to work together for not just domestic capacities but fulfilling global export demands too.
The Indian pharma industry has been a world leader in generics markets contributing significantly to the global demand for generics in terms of volume.
‘Made in India’ drugs supplied to the developed economies such as the US, EU, Japan and many other countries are known for their safety and quality, he noted.
The Government is promoting Bulk Drug Parks for financing Common Infrastructure facilities in 3 Bulk Drug Parks with financial implication of Rs.3,000 crore over next 5 years to boost domestic manufacturing of critical KSMs/Drug Intermediates and APIs.
Welcoming the Government decision, he assured wide support from FICCI and its pharma member companies. fiinews.com
