Generic opportunities to drive Indian pharma sector growth

With many drugs going off patent in the US, Indian pharma companies would continue to experience strong growth in American market, a credit rating agency has said.
Indian pharma companies would continue to experience strong growth in the U S over the medium-term. This would be driven by the sizable generic opportunity (drugs with brand value of USD 25-30 billion are expected to face generic competition) over the next 2-3 years, investment information and credit rating agency, ICRA said in a statement.
The other factor that would drive growth will be, "strong product pipeline of pending ANDAs with high increasing proportion of complex generics that compares favourably with generic majors such as Teva, Mylan and Actavis," it added.

Though in the domestic market, growth momentum during the year has been moderate.
"This was primarily attributable to the implementation of the new drug pricing policy, which resulted in price cuts on a wide range of drugs and subsequently led to supply chain disruptions due to disagreement over trade margins between industry and trade partners," ICRA said.
While U S remains the key driver for Indian pharma sector, emerging markets provide a steady and sustainable source of growth, it added.
"Acquisitions appear to be the key route to emerging markets for Indian players. We expect companies to remain fairly active in the M&A space and look for in-organic route to fill gaps in their portfolio, ICRA said.

ICRA expects trend of significant increase in the R&D budgets to continue as most of the leading Indian companies are in the midst of expanding presence in complex therapy segments such as injectables, inhalers, dermatology, controlled-release substances and even biosimilars.