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Call to Augment Local Drug Manufacturing Sector

DUBAI - Permission to adjust prices in accordance with the fluctuations in exchange rates and speeding up the licensing procedures will accelerateof production of generic drugs in UAE.

Medicine manufacturers pointed out that only less than ten per cent of the Dh400 million-worth medicines consumed in UAE are being produced in the country, and the rest are being imported. About five major medicine manufacturers together account for a lion’s share of the medicine manufactured in the UAE and only one of them is over 20 years of existence, while the rest have come up within the last five years.

No doubt the medicine manufacturing industry is in its nascent stage in the UAE now, but definitely there is scope for augmenting the share of domestically produced medicines here. If this is not done there could be a situation where we may not be getting sufficient supply of medicine if couple of distributors chose not to import medicines, Binay Shetty, Executive Director of the NMC Group told Khaleej Times. The NMC runs Neopharma, a leading drug manufacturing firm in UAE.

Elaborating on the exchange rate issue the General Manager of Julphar Dr Sahli said many of the raw materials used in the manufacture of drugs are being imported from countries in Europe and other regions where the currencies are not pegged to dollar. The currency rates in such cases fluctuate often while the price of the medicines is fixed, and this affects our margins, he said.

“For example, we are buying several packaging items for drugs from European countries where Euro prevails. We may have fixed the medicine prices when the Euro was having a lower rate. But when exchange rate of Euro goes up we will not able to jack up the prices of the medicine, because it has been fixed by the government. So, this affects our margin, which in turn will lessen our investments in innovations and technological upgradation in the medicine manufacturing sector, he explained.

He said there are reports that some of the Multi-National Companies (MNCs) in the drug manufacturing sector who have their production units in Europe, are given the freedom to adjust the prices of their products sold in the UAE, in accordance with the variations in the exchange rate.

But it is not clear whether this concession is available to the local manufacturers also, “It will be good if the government can extend this facility to the local manufacturers as well, because it will strengthen the domestic industry,”he said.

Shetty pointed out that the generic drugs can be produced by the companies other than the one which had developed them only after the patent elapses.

· ramavarman@khaleejtimes.ae