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New Delhi — India’s pharmaceutical exports this fiscal year are set to grow nearly twice as fast as last year to hit sales of $27bn, driven by strong US buying, a government-backed trade body told Reuters, despite deaths linked to Indian-made cough syrups.
The robust forecast comes against the backdrop of earlier concerns from the government that last year’s deaths of dozens of children in Gambia, which the World Health Organisation (WHO) linked to drugs made in India, had “adversely impacted the image of India’s pharmaceutical products across the globe”.
Two other cough syrups made in India killed 19 children in Uzbekistan around December, according to the Uzbekistan government.
India is the world’s third-largest maker of drugs by volume after the US and China, and senior pharma trade official Udaya Bhaskar said the country was too big a player for buyers to move away because of “these aberrations” in Gambia and Uzbekistan.
“As far as the Gambia and Uzbekistan incidents are concerned, if you see in terms of the image of the country, there is a dent,” Bhaskar, director-general of the Pharmaceuticals Export Promotion Council of India (Pharmexcil), told Reuters on Tuesday.
“But if you see our [April-June] exports, they have grown. We are doing very well in the US market, we are growing at more than 10% there. In the past four-five months, the growth in exports shows that people have not taken very, very seriously [any concerns about] the quality of Indian pharmaceuticals.”
India’s pharma exports rose 3.25% in the year to March 31 to $25.4bn and Bhaskar said it was set to grow by about 6.3% to $27bn this fiscal year.
Sales to the US, India’s biggest market with 30% of its overall pharma exports, rose 6.2% to $7.5bn last fiscal year, government data show.
India’s overall pharma exports in the April-June quarter rose 5% to $6.58bn.
India is seeing good overall demand for drugs for central nervous system (CNS) conditions, cardiovascular and oncology, Bhaskar said.
Country visits
Pharmexcil delegations have visited countries including Nigeria, Egypt and Russia in recent months to allay any concerns about Indian drugs, he said.
“Wherever we are going, people are asking and we are clarifying,” Bhaskar said. “We are telling them our stand. We are trying our level best.”
India has denied links to the deaths in Gambia, but found another company guilty of sending adulterated products to Uzbekistan and cancelled its licence. The company, Marion Biotech, has denied wrongdoing.
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