The latest move by Bangladesh to encourage local pharmaceutical manufacturing may hurt Indian exports in near future, according to a report published by Livemint on Tuesday.
Titled as ‘Bangladesh’s bulk drugs policy may hurt Indian exports’, the report said, “Bangladesh on 24 May announced a corporate tax holiday for API and laboratory reagent manufacturers till 2032, as well as many incentives to encourage local manufacturing of drug ingredients.”
“These steps aim to boost pharmaceutical exports and lower the cost for domestic consumers as, in the absence of local APIs, Bangladesh relies on imports from China, South Korea and India,” it said.
“With backward integration of API and finished formulations production, Bangladesh could emerge as an important supplier especially for new medicines that are patented in India and cannot be supplied by Indian generic suppliers,” Leena Menghaney, head of South Asia, MSF Access campaign, was quoted as saying in the report.
“Bangladesh is a small country compared to India. However, their presence in the global scenario in formulations as well as in API industry is phenomenal,” the report quoted B R Sikri, president of the Federation of Pharma Entrepreneurs as saying.
“In a short span of a couple of years, they have started exporting to more than 80 countries. If this tempo continues, it will be a big competition to India.”
