Govt courts Japan to make drugs in India

After regular but failed attempts to push pharmaceuticals exports to Japan, the central government is now set to attract Japanese companies to come and ‘Make in India’.

While government is already in talks with 20 Japanese companies to establish contract manufacturing businesses in India, a new set of delegation will visit Japan in August to attract more companies and boost them with a fresh dose of confidence.

Japan has always remained a tough market for Indian drug exports, which fell drastically by 20% in 2014-15. The market had registered moderate growth till 2012-13 with an average growth of over 8.5%.

“Japan has a different mindset about our quality of generics and it has been very tough to push our exports there. However, now we are negotiating with the Japanese government to come and manufacture drugs in India and utilise our low cost services. This will boost ‘Make in India’ initiative,” said PV Appaji, director general, Pharmexcil. “In next two months, we will follow up with those 20 companies which showed their interest to establish contract manufacturing in India during our visit in April.”

“We also plan to attract new set of companies there. For this we will hold fresh round of talks with Japanese health regulators,” he added.
Being the second largest pharmaceutical market with one of the largest per capita spending on medicines in the world ($886 in 2013), Japan has remained a focus market for the Indian pharmaceutical industry.

Otherwise, United States tops the list of countries importing Indian generics followed by UK, Germany, Russia and Nigeria.

In 2013-14, the industry had an export turnover of `90,000 crore and government expects to cross Rs 1,00,000 crore by this year.