India has begun aggressively implementing a policy that will increase its local production of pharmaceutical ingredients and become an alternative supplier of global drugs.

The “China-plus-one” strategy will provide incentives to domestic manufacturers of essential drug ingredients.

The shut down of factories in China due to the COVID-19 pandemic left India with a shortage of raw materials for its pharmaceutical manufacture sector and exposed its dependence on Chinese imports. India, the world’s single largest exporter of generic drugs, relies on bulk ingredients imported from China, including Paracetamol (100% of imports from China), Metformin (100%), Ampicillin (100%), Ciprofaxin (100%), Amoxixillin (90=95%) and Ibuprofen (85-95%), according to 2018 data from Pharmexcil.

Last month, the government of India announced a 140 billion rupee ($1.8 billion) fund to set up three drug manufacturing hubs. The production of 53 key starting materials and active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) are to be boosted.

It has been predicted that Indian bulk drug manufacturers could grow their income by $3.3 billion if they expand capacity and global supply as the virus outbreak disrupts China’s pharma sector.

Source: supplychainbrain.com – 15^th April 2020 (originally from Bloomberg)

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