As the world looks for drugs that could be effective against Coronavirus disease, many national and international regulators have approved Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), an anti-malarial drug sold under many brand names but primarily Plaquenil.
Donald Trump himself strongly came out in support of using this drug to cure COVID-19 and requested PM Modi for supplies. India, which earlier put restrictions on the export of this drug given national priorities, has now approved for exports.
“In view of the humanitarian aspects of the pandemic, it has been decided that India would license paracetamol and HCQ in appropriate quantities to all our neighboring countries who are dependent on our capabilities. We will also be supplying these essential drugs to some nations that have been particularly badly affected by the pandemic,” Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said, as the country has enough supplies for domestic use as well as to commit to global demand.
If this drug proves effective against COVID-19, which seems very likely given the consensus in the medical and political class, India would have a huge advantage, as the country alone supplies more than three fourth of global demand. Ipca Laboratories, a company based Mumbai alone supplies 70 percent of the global consumption of this drug.
The share price of Ipca Laboratories rallied in double digits after the government lifted the ban on the export of HCQ. After the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) approved HCQ preventive drugs, the government placed an order of 10 crore tablets with Ipca Laboratories a Zydus Cadila- the two major manufacturers of the drug.
Presently India produces 20 crore tablets of HCQ per month and production capacity could be ramped up if needed. “We are capable of producing 40 metric tons of HCQ every month (which means 20 crore pills of 200 mg). The drugmakers have built good production capacities as it is also used for rheumatoid arthritis,” said Shubhra Singh, chairman, National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA), a drug price and availability watchdog.
“We have confirmed that there are enough stocks across the country and the manufacturers have started supplying the drugs for government orders. If HCQ proves further relevance, its production can be jacked up,” she added.
The companies have geared up to ramp up production. Pankaj Patel, chairman of Cadila Healthcare, said the country could make hundreds of tonnes of HCQ if needed. “We are ramping up our capacity and are geared up to supply enough for the Indian market. There would be no shortage of this drug here. Moreover, most of the raw material used is fortunately available locally,” he said, as per a report by Business Standard.
Now with HCQ as an approved drug against COVID-19, almost every country around the world, from global superpower United States to our neighbors like Pakistan, Sri Lanka, would be dependent on India for supplies.
However, given the capacity of the Indian companies an active monitoring by the government, there will be no issues to meet the global demand. A K Jain, joint MD of Ipca Labs, the company which holds 70 percent of the global market share, in an interview with Economic Times, said, “I have assured the government that whatever order they have given to IPCA, we will be servicing this month itself. We will do it before the month-end. They have given an order for around six crore tablets, so we said we will be servicing everything. In spite of the logistics problem and all other problems we will make sure there is no delay in supplying the medicine.”
India is one of the largest pharmaceutical exporters with a total export of 12.1 billion dollars, or, 3.4 percent to the global market, and ranks 9th in the list of top global exporters of pharmaceutical products.
The pharmaceutical industry grew at double-digit in the last decade except for the last one or two years, when the growth slowed due to regulations put by the government and other disruptive reforms.
Currently, the industry has an annual revenue of around 1.3 lakh crore rupees or 33 billion United States dollars. The largest players are Dilip Shanghvi led Sun Pharmaceutical, Lupin Limited of Desh Bandhu Gupta, Dr. Reddy laboratories of Reddy’s, Cipla, Aurbindo Pharma, Piramal Enterprise, Glenmark Pharmaceutical, Torrent, Biocon, and Serum Institute.
Many Indian billionaires made their fortunes in the pharmaceutical sector, and it is arguably the largest sector in terms of the number of billionaires after the Information Technology-BPM sector.