Off patent drugs pegged at $50 bn

Indian pharmaceutical companies are poised and fully equipped to take advantage of the $50 billion worth of drugs going off patent in the next five years after introduction of the new patent regime, Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath said.

Addressing an international conference organised by the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House, London, last evening, Nath said that India presented an ideal confluence of five factors namely cost-effective manufacturing, well-developed chemical industry infrastructure, strong vertical integration (from bulk to formulations to packing), abundant scientific talent and technical skills and unique synergy in fields of IT, biotech and medicine.

"Time is, therefore, ripe for a quantum leap. Our objective is not only to manufacture drugs, but also to make India a hub for medical research and clinical data management", the Minister said.

"While the statistics reveal that India has a huge drug industry (8 per cent of the world's drugs are manufactured in India) "� it also becomes apparent that the financial realisations are not commensurate with the size.

"This means that while we are getting paid for the actual stuff, there is no financial realisation for the 'intellectual property' value behind the formulations "� and in the drug industry it is this intellectual property value that constitutes the huge margins", he added.

India has 300 pharma companies of large and moderate size and another 10,000 small and tiny firms, but 70 per cent of the production is by the top 100 larger companies.