The Hindu : Assocham warns against stringent law on healthcare

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, May 08, 2002

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Assocham warns against stringent law on healthcare

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI MAY 7. India needs a patent regime that will encourage foreign direct investment and Research and Development from pharmaceutical companies. While the key issues that need to be tackled effectively include FDI, R&D and revenue inflows, what is important is the relaying of right signals to attract sizeable FDI in this sector.

This was the consensus that emerged during a discussion on "Impact of the Patents Bill on Healthcare'' organised by the Associated Chamber of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham).

The participants said the domestic pharmaceutical industry was seeking further amendments to the proposed law on the protection of the Indian consumers' interests.

The gains from the Doha Declaration on healthcare should not be frittered away by a piece of legislation that was unduly stringent, the participants said.

"The fears are not only of the higher prices that would result from the effective patent protection and create virtual monopolies of the MNCs but also of cheaper imports from China."

The pharmaceutical group of U.S. companies, however, tried to allay the fears of unreasonable price rise by arguing that more than 90 per cent of drugs is off-patent and even the patented products have to compete with a number of patent-expired therapeutic equivalents — all the essential medicines, therefore, would continue to be available in India at affordable prices because of the existence of patent-expired therapeutic equivalents.

On the other hand, Assocham said that since the economic liberalisation in 1991, the capital investment in the industry had almost trebled. The production of formulations had gone up by more than four times and that of bulk drugs by 6 times.

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