Wednesday, August 21, 2019

Chinese Socialism needs Indian medicines

Every major advanced developed country in the world is importing generic medicines from India. In 2018, the US imported from India 5.02 billion, UK-550 million, Canada-248 m, Australia- 248 m, Germany-215 m, France- 190 m, Belgium- 180 m and Netherlands-129 m. These countries are not doing any favour to India. They have been forced to do this to reduce the high cost of their countries’s health care. As this consciousness grows, India’s exports keep increasing.

But for India's inexpensive generics, several hundred thousands of African patients, who could not afford the expensive patented medicines, would have died. Organizations such as Gates and Melinda Foundation, Clinton Foundation, WHO and Doctors without borders bought the Indian generics to distribute to the poor patients in Africa. They even took on the fight with the Multinationals on behalf of India. 

India exported 15 billion dollars of medicines to the world in 2018. India is the largest (by volume) exporter of generic medicines in the world. 

More than fifty percent of India’s exports went to the advanced developed countries with the most rigorous quality control and registration procedures. India has around 200 pharma units approved by US FDA. India has the second largest FDA-approved units after USA. There arefour Indian companies ( Sun Pharma, Cipla, Lupin and Dr Reddy Labs) in the top ten global generic medicine producers in the world.

Pharmaceuticals is one area in which India has beaten China in exports. In 2018, India exported 15 billion dollars as against 9 bn of China. What is interesting is that the Indian manufacturers use a substantial quantity of Chinese raw materials. 

In 2018, India imported just 2 billion dollars of medicines. 

Guess how much did China import from India and the world … just 39 million dollars from India out of their total imports of 28 billion dollars. 

Here is the break up of major sources of Chinese imports:
From Germany 6.8 billion dollars, US- 4.7 bn, France-2.3 bn, Italy-1.8 bn and over a billion dollars each from Sweden, Ireland, Switzerland, Japan and UK.. 
The Chinese imported much more from Argentina, Brazil, Poland, Norway, Hungary, Finland and Greece than from India. 

China, which has developed its own versions of Amazon, Google and Facebook by blocking these American giants, seem to have become a willing victim of the western pharmaceutical multinationals who take the Chinese government and consumers for a ride... 

It is a no brainer.. the Chinese need the less expensive generics from India as much as the rich as well as the poor countries of the world.  

This theme was brought in a Chinese film “ Dying to survive ( released in 2018) in which a Chinese smuggles Indian medicines for treatment of about a thousand Chinese cancer patients who could not afford the pricey branded ones. The film was based on a real life story.

                                                poster of " Dying to survive"



The Chinese government, known for smart nationalistic policies seem to be plainly dumb  in the case of generic medicines. 

The Chinese dumbness is an opportunity for India.  The government of India should push the Chinese government to increase import of Indian medicines to partly reduce the massive trade deficit of over fifty billion dollars. The Chinese can certainly buy a couple of billions of dollars of generics from India to reduce their high health care cost. The Chinese government will do a favour to their own people by importing more generic medicines from India. 

The Chinese Socialism needs Indian medicines..

Source of statistics: ITC, Geneva

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