Pharma industry demands structural reforms

Calls for setting up an export council for one-window facility

KARACHI: Pharmaceutical manufacturers have urged the government to immediately introduce structural reforms in the industry in order to stop the declining drug exports.

“We want the government to take measures that can immediately help the declining pharmaceutical exports,” Pakistan Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association (PPMA) South Zone former chairman Dr Shaikh Kaiser Waheed said while talking to The Express Tribune.

PPMA - a group of over 400 local pharmaceutical companies - has given various proposals to the government to undertake structural reforms that will help increase the industry’s exports.

PPMA officials have termed export policies of the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) anti-industry and stringent, which do not help in even sustaining the current export volumes. These include a high fee on export-related documentation, unnecessary documentation, lukewarm response of DRAP to promoting exports and frequent changes in regulations.

PPMA is demanding that the government establish a council for pharmaceutical exports (CPE) to offer one-window facility to the exporters. It has also sought immediate transfer of all export-related functions of pharmaceutical companies to the Trade Development Authority until the establishment of CPE.



Export data suggests the PPMA demands are legitimate. In 2014-15, pharmaceutical exports dropped to $160 million from $220 million in financial year 2012. The association has promised that it will take exports to $1 billion by 2020 if the government removes major hurdles in the way.

“The government does not know why pharmaceutical exports are on the decline,” a former PPMA chairman commented. In recent years, the Indian government has time and again stood behind its pharmaceutical industry to support exports. Unfortunately, the situation is completely different in Pakistan,” he added.

The PPMA chairman was not in Pakistan and therefore he was not available for comments. One of the longstanding demands of the pharmaceutical industry is to bring it under patronage of the Ministry of Industries from the Ministry of Health so that it can be better regulated like other industries.

Pharma Bureau Executive Director Ayesha Tammy Haq supported the PPMA demand for shifting the industry under the Ministry of Industries.

“We have no issue if some functions of the pharma industry are shifted to the Ministry of Industries. Even after doing this, the Ministry of Health can continue to regulate the industry in quality matters,” she said.

Although members of the Pharma Bureau, which is a group of 20 research-based multinational pharmaceutical companies, are not involved in making exports, they believe the PPMA concerns about declining exports are legitimate.

“We believe the government needs to give a fair price to the pharma industry to maintain the quality of products. This is also a major reason why PPMA members are finding it difficult to increase exports,” added Haq.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 7^th, 2016.

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