Pharma export council to open offices abroad

The Pharmaceutical Exports Promotion Council (Pharmexcil) will soon start offices and warehouses in the US, Europe, Latin America and Japan to help Indian drug exporters boost their business in markets abroad.

Pharmexcil, under the Ministry of Commerce, is working out a detailed strategy paper in this regard, said Smitesh Shah, chairman.

“These four markets constitute a majority of exports by our members (over 1,500) and the move is to help in market development and to bring down export costs by using common warehousing facilities and office infrastructure, especially for companies entering into newer geographies,” he said.

Six-year-old Pharmexcil has regional offices in Mumbai, New Delhi and Ahmedabad, besides headquarters in Hyderabad.

Shah said though pharmaceutical exports were down in the April to October period of 2009, recent trends showed these had picked up. A temporary slowing was mainly due to the global slowdown in 2008-09 period, which resulted in less orders from overseas wholesalers to clear their inventories and less than expected orders from multinational companies for contract manufacturing.

The growth in drug exports from India decreased to about 10-12 per cent in the first three quarters of 2009-10, in comparison to Rs 39,537.7 crore of exports, with a 29 per cent growth, recorded in 2008-09, showed data from the Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence & Statistics (DGCI&S) and the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE). India’s drug exports grew at an average rate of 21 per cent in the past four years.

Shah said India’s drug exports were likely to show above 15 per cent growth for 2009-10. India’s $12-billion (Rs 53,500 crore) pharmaceutical industry earns 40 per cent of its revenue from exports of off-patent generic drugs.

A CII-KPMG report estimates total Indian pharma output (including that for export markets) would be growing at a compounded annual rate of 16 per cent over 2007-11. According to a Mckinsey report, the domestic pharmaceutical market is set to grow from $6.3 billion (Rs 28,000 crore) in 2005 to $20 billion (Rs 89,000 crore) by 2015, with a growth rate of 12.3 per cent.