Pharma exports declined by 4 percent up to Aug on pricing pressure

Hyderabad: Pharma exports from India registered a negative growth of 4 percent during the first five months of the current fiscal owing to increased regulatory issues coupled with pricing pressure in global markets, a Pharmexcil official said on Tuesday.

According to Udaya Bhaskar, the Director General of the Pharmaceuticals Export Promotion Council of India (Pharmexcil), a Ministry of Commerce and Industry body, the pharma exports to other countries witnessed a decline of 7.9 percent during the April-July period while recovered to 4 percent in August leaving the overall growth at minus four percent till August this year.

"Till July, pharma exports registered minus 7.9 percent growth. Subsequently, it recovered in August and stood at minus four percent. There was four percent growth in August. Pricing pressure is one of the factors (for the decline in exports). To some extent import alerts (by USFDA on Indian plants), regulatory issues and currency fluctuation, are some of the factors contributed to downward growth," Udaya Bhaskar told.

He, however, hoped that the overall exports will recover and come into positive zone for the full year as exports are expected to take an uptick from September.

"We expect the overall growth for the year would be in the positive. Implementation of GST also created initially some confusion among the manufacturers leading to stoppage of production by some companies. Now we are seeing some growth," he further said.

According to statistics, India exported USD 16.90 billion worth of pharma products during 2015-16 and the same was slightly declined in 2016-17 to USD 16.64 billion in 2016-17.