India's pharmaceutical industry should strive to be the world's healthcare custodian: Piyush Goyal

 

Mumbai: Shri Piyush Goyal, Union Minister of Commerce and Industry, has challenged India's pharmaceutical industry to strive to become the world's healthcare custodian.

Shri Piyush Goyal remarked today in Mumbai at the 'Indian Pharma - Global Health Care' Diamond Jubilee Conclave of the Indian Drug Manufacturers' Association (IDMA) that India is already known as the 'pharmacy of the world.' "The Diamond Jubilee is an excellent opportunity to reflect on our accomplishments while also making plans for the future. We must focus not only on our generic strengths but also on ensuring our backward and forward links. We must experiment with product development and break new ground "Shri Goyal stated the following.

Three mantras for economic success, according to the Minister, are to focus on innovation, stress quality, and work with the global market. "Competitiveness on a global scale will be critical." It's critical to stay on top of emerging advancements and industrial best practices," he noted.

Shri Piyush Goyal also encouraged the country's 750 large pharmaceutical companies to lend a hand to smaller businesses and assist them in becoming quality manufacturers of high-quality goods. He advised that GMP (Good Manufacturing Standards) businesses set up a fund for this purpose and figure out how to ensure that the whole pharma industry in India follows good manufacturing practices within a set time limit.

Shri Piyush Goyal claimed that the government has opened a pathway for quicker approval of their products, referring to the recently concluded FTAs with the UAE and Australia. "We were able to include some game-changing options in the agreements that focus on non-technical hurdles for the first time." It will benefit the pharmaceutical industry in particular, he noted, and he hopes that the industry will be able to exploit these new agreements to expedite approvals. He also mentioned that the government has created several programs, such as the PLI for APIs and medical devices.

"India's intellectual property regime has been reinforced. For the first time in 11 years, our domestic patent filings exceeded our foreign filings ". "Patent applications have climbed four times what they were 7-8 years ago," the Minister remarked, seeing this as a positive indicator.

According to the Minister, India's pharmaceutical business is the fifth-largest contributor to exports, with a value of $25 billion in March 2022. "As global supply networks become more and more unpredictable," he added, "the remarkable growth that we have witnessed in the last ten years should be carried forward to ensure that we become self-reliant."

Shri Piyush Goyal praised India's pharmaceutical industry for being positive in the face of hardship, ensuring the success of India's major immunization effort, and supplying vaccines and medicines to more than 200 countries.