Pharma exports declined by 4 per cent up to Aug on pricing pressure

Udaya Bhaskar, Director General, Pharmexcil hopes that the overall exports will recover and come into positive zone for the full year as exports are expected to take an uptick from September

Pharmaceutical exports from India registered a negative growth of 4 per cent during the first five months of the current fiscal owing to increased regulatory issues coupled with pricing pressure in global markets, a Pharmexcil official said in Hyderabad recently.

According to Udaya Bhaskar, Director General, Pharmaceuticals Export Promotion Council of India (Pharmexcil), a Ministry of Commerce and Industry body, the pharma exports to other countries witnessed a decline of 7.9 per cent during the April-July period while recovered to 4 per cent in August leaving the over all growth at minus four per cent till August this year.

"Till July, pharma exports registered minus 7.9 per cent growth. Subsequently it recovered in August and stood at -4 per cent. There was 4 per cent growth in August. Pricing pressure is one of the factors (for decline in exports). To some extent import alerts (by US FDA on Indian plants), regulatory issues and currency fluctuation, are some of the factors contributed to downward growth," Bhaskar said.

He, however, hoped that the overall exports will recover and come into positive zone for the full year as exports are expected to take an uptick from September.

"We expect the overall growth for the year would be in the positive. Implementation of GST also created initially some confusion among the manufacturers leading to stoppage of production by some companies. Now we are seeing some growth," he further said.

According to statistics, India exported $ 16.90 billion worth of pharma products during 2015-16 and the same was slightly declined in 2016-17 to $ 16.64 billion in 2016-17.