“In my opinion, the ‘Make in India’ initiative will slowly and gradually prove to be a boon for Indian pharma companies. India is the third largest market for pharma globally and India exports 20 per cent of the global generic pharma products. In the past years, a couple of reasons have been responsible for the drop in exports” said Suresh Pareek, Managing Director, Ideal Cures
These include delayed regulatory approvals and depreciation in the currencies of the emerging markets. Indian companies need to give importance and maintain strict GMP standards for manufacturing.
At present, India is totally dependent on China for 12 most important active ingredients used in the pharma sector. India imported APIs worth $3.9 billion in 2014-15, of which China accounted for $3.3 billion. To reduce this dependence on China for APIs, the government is planning to provide incentives to both state-run and privately-owned companies to produce the active ingredients.
Suresh also said that “as far as MSMEs are concerned, there are very few incentives for manufacturing in the pharma sector. I feel that even when the government is trying to boost the ‘Make in India’ initiative by introduction of incentives, schemes etc. the whole change will require time and active participation of the manufacturing pharma giants”.
Source: The Financial Express
