Pharma players gear up to cash in on overseas opportunities – The Hindu
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The Indian pharmaceutical industry can benefit significantly from the huge emerging export opportunity. For long acknowledged as the generic drug manufacturing capital of the world, India with its several low cost generic manufacturers, can exploit the fact that over the next few years, a large number of drugs will be going off-patent.
Ratings agency Crisil said drugs worth $130-150 billion will be going off patent between 2012 and 2017. To capitalise on this, it expects that India’s top 20 pharmaceutical companies will crank up capital expenditure by around 40 per cent to over Rs. 50,000 crore by 2017-18.
While the domestic industry was at about Rs. 77,000 crore in 2013, exports ranged around Rs. 90,000 crore, according to S. V. Veeramani, President, Indian Drug Manufacturers’ Association (IDMA).
Pharmaceutical patent filings numbered around 2,500 in 2013, growing at around 11 per cent.
“We require robust patent laws in place as there are apprehensions about patent protection in India.’’
In India, the industry has been facing increasing regulatory restrictions. The last year saw headwinds from price cuts imposed on a wide range of essential drugs post the new drug pricing policy and higher research & development (R&D) costs.
Read more – The Hindu