Pakistan offers strong Investment opportunities in pharmaceutical sector: health minister

Health Minister Mustafa Kamal said on Saturday that Pakistan offered significant investment opportunities in the pharmaceutical sector and invited Chinese companies to deepen collaboration with local firms through business-to-business (B2B) investment partnerships.

The remarks came a day after Pakistani and Chinese pharmaceutical companies signed nine agreements worth more than $440 million, as the government reaffirmed its commitment to ensuring the security of Chinese nationals working in the country.

Addressing the Pakistan-China B2B Conference on the Pharmaceutical, Healthcare and Biotechnology Sector in Islamabad, Kamal highlighted that the country’s geographical location and investment environment offered lucrative opportunities for investors.

He underscored that the pharmaceutical industry ‘directly linked to public health’ remained a priority sector for the country.

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The health minister said that the investment in Pakistan’s pharmaceutical industry would provide access not only to the domestic market but also to regional and international markets.

The minister expressed confidence that the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) would achieve the World Health Organisation (WHO) Maturity Level 3 (ML3) accreditation by April next year “after completing the required regulatory benchmarks”.

“This milestone would significantly enhance Pakistan’s pharmaceutical regulatory system, enabling the country to export pharmaceutical products to more than 100 additional international markets,” Kamal asserted while addressing the conference.

Referring to the signing of agreements worth over $440 million between Pakistani and Chinese pharmaceutical companies on June 17, Kamal said the government’s foremost priority was to ensure their effective implementation.

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The minister assured local and Chinese investors that the government, through the Ministry of National Health Services, would extend all possible facilitation - cutting red tape - to support investment projects to materialise.

In his concluding remarks, the minister thanked the Chinese delegates for participating in the conference and expressed confidence that the two-day event would help strengthen Pakistan-China cooperation in the pharmaceutical sector while creating new opportunities for trade and investment.

The latest pharmaceutical agreements add to a series of investment commitments announced by Pakistan and China in recent months. In May, Pakistani and Chinese companies signed agreements and memorandums of understanding (MoU) worth more than $7 billion at the Pakistan-China B2B Investment Conference in Hangzhou, covering sectors including information technology, agriculture, renewable energy and battery storage.

More recently, Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb was informed that over $20 billion worth of MoUs had been signed between Pakistani and Chinese entities, with growing Chinese private-sector interest in manufacturing, logistics, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology and textiles.