Drug exports go up 18.7% to US$ 24.44 bn in FY 21
India’s pharmaceutical exports has increased 18.7 per cent to US$ 24.44 billion in the financial year ended March 31, 2021 due to a big surge in demand for Indian made generics owing to its quality and affordability.
When the global pharma market has decreased by 1-2 per cent in 2020, the industry posted its best export performance in value terms due to an increase in demand for Indian drugs, said Pharmaceuticals Export Promotion Council of India (Pharmexcil) Director General Ravi Udaya Bhaskar.
Drug formulations & biologicals is the second largest principal commodity being exported by India. Export during fiscal year 2020 was US$ 20.58 billion with a growth rate of 7.57 per cent.
“We have observed a big leap in our exports in March 2021 to US$ 2.3 billion which is highest among the exports of all the months of this financial year. The growth rate for March is 48.5 per cent against the March 2020’s export of US$ 1.54 billion. Growth rate seems relatively big as the export of March 2020 was crunched due to lockdown across the world and supply chain disruption,” said Bhaskar.
“Pharma exports are substantially growing all these years and we have observed the highest export figures and growth rate in this financial year compared to the last eight financial years. We are expecting the same trend to continue further owing to increased demand of Indian made generics and vaccines,” he said.
North America is the largest exporting region for Indian pharmaceuticals with more than 34 per cent share. Exports to USA, Canada and Mexico have recorded growth of 12.6 per cent, 30 per cent and 21.4 per cent respectively.
Export to Africa has relatively gone up with 13.4 per cent as against last year’s growth of 2.24 per cent. South Africa being the second largest exporting country, recorded a big jump of 28 per cent growth. Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania are the other major destinations in Africa.
Europe is the third largest exporting region which has recorded approximately 11 per cent growth.
There is growing demand for Indian drugs in non-traditional markets viz Latin America (14.5 per cent growth), CIS (23.5 per cent growth) and Middle East (17.5 per cent growth).
The growth rates were observed in exports to unexplored countries like Australia (21 per cent) UAE (43 per cent), Uzbekistan (125 per cent) and Ukraine (40.6 per cent).
Pharmexcil’s efforts in penetrating the markets of around 40 countries other than North America and Europe during the pandemic by way of virtual business meetings with support of the department of commerce and India missions abroad yielded positive results, said Pharmexcil director general.
“We are expecting big growth in our vaccine exports in the coming years and the government policy on the PLI scheme will also help the Indian pharma to grow by reducing import dependence and develop export potential in the days to come as most of the countries are looking at India for APIs,” he added.
