'India has an edge over Japan in generics'

Bad reputation on quality of medicines exported from India and weak combat mechanisms from the government to weed out counterfeit medicines in the international society are the bottlenecks for the Indian pharmaceutical companies to grow in Japan, according to Kenji Toda, chairman, Japan Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association.

Speaking at a seminar on ‘Investment opportunities in the Japanese pharmaceutical market’, organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) here on Friday, he said Japan and India can join hands in the areas of reverse engineering for cost-effective manufacturing.

India also had an upper hand over Japan in having an attractive environment for clinical research and a large English-speaking professional, he added.

Toda said generics had not been used on a large scale in Japan as Japanese were hyper-sensitive to the quality of food and medicines and the generic makers had not yet obtained a level of trust from them.

“Japan is an extremely quality-demanding society,” he said, adding that the small size of the companies does not allow them to cut costs even on large-scale production.

Japanese pharma major Eisai Corporation today launched its operations from the Pharma City special economic zone (SEZ) in Visakhapatnam for drug substance, drug product and active pharmaceutical ingredients manufacturing, he said. The new plant would allow Eisai to offer products at affordable prices in India, Japan, the US and the European Union.

CII panel convenor (corporate social responsibility) and Bharat Biotech International Limited’s joint managing director, Suchitra K Ella, said rigid regulations and intellectual property rights issues in Japan were not allowing many companies to foray into Japan.