India decides to resume customs clearance on Chinese imported API

For decades, India, known as the "World Pharmacy", has continuously exported cheap medicines to various countries, becoming one of the world's major generic drug countries and one of the major drug exporters. From the perspective of the industry chain, the pharmaceutical industry involves three links: pharmaceutical raw materials, pharmaceutical R&D and manufacturing, and pharmaceutical circulation. Among them, the reality that India cannot escape is that the country's pharmaceutical manufacturers are highly dependent on Chinese APIs. Then check the level. Therefore, the recent suspension of customs clearance of goods from China has reversed.

According to Indian media reports, starting from the evening of June 30, India has begun customs clearance of Chinese imported APIs stranded in various ports. It is reported that the total value of this batch of goods has reached 2 billion Indian rupees. The report pointed out that this batch of goods had arrived in Indian ports long ago, but it was affected by the “bad wave” in India, which led to the delay in customs clearance. However, judging from India's current move to quietly clear Chinese APIs, the country's seemingly turbulent wave of resistance has actually revealed its true strength and lack of strength. Taking this incident as an example, the main reasons for the reversal of India's attitude are nothing more than these three points.

First, Indian pharmaceutical companies have fallen into a crisis of shortage of raw materials. In fact, before India decided to clear Chinese APIs, the Indian Medicines Export Promotion Council submitted a statement to the Indian Ministry of Commerce, Ministry of Chemical Industry, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare Department, requesting that import restrictions on Chinese APIs not be imposed. If this is done, it is equivalent to breaking the “life path” of Indian pharmaceutical companies.

This is because my country is the world's largest producer and exporter of APIs, with more than 1,500 API manufacturers. In 2019, it exported 10.1185 million tons of APIs, and the annual export volume reached 33.683 billion US dollars. Among them, the total amount of APIs exported by my country to India was 809,900 tons, with a value of 5.653 billion US dollars, accounting for nearly 17% of my country's total exports of APIs, accounting for more than 1/3 of China's exports of APIs to Asia. These series of figures all show that behind the major Indian generic countries, China's APIs are highly dependent on. Earlier, in March, when China faced the test of an emergency, when the production was temporarily suspended, India also sent special planes to purchase raw materials in China to prevent a serious shortage of Indian pharmaceutical companies. Now that India’s epidemic prevention blockade has not completely ended, if restrictions are imposed on Chinese APIs, it will undoubtedly exacerbate the crisis of Indian pharmaceutical manufacturers’ shortage of raw materials.

Second, the outbreak in India may usher in a peak outbreak. More importantly, India, with a population of 1.35 billion, has accumulated more than 600,000 confirmed cases, making it the fourth country in the world to have more than 600,000 diagnosed cases. But this is still the existing statistics under the condition that India's detection and tracking of the epidemic are still seriously insufficient. How large the actual number is is completely unimaginable.

Under such circumstances, the director of the Indian Institute of Medical Sciences Randipu Guleriya expects that the peak of the outbreak in India may occur in July; in view of medical conditions and population density, the severity of the outbreak in India will exceed the severity of the outbreak. United States. As a result, India needs pharmaceutical companies to produce drugs at full capacity to ensure basic medical services, so as to control the spread of the epidemic. It should be noted that 90% of the raw materials used in India for the production of the new crown effective drug hydroxychloroquine come directly from China. Based on the strong demand in the Indian market, in the first quarter of this year, the export of my country's anti-epidemic raw material hydroxychloroquine sulfate increased against the trend, exceeding the level of 100 tons last year.

Third, India’s economic recovery is a huge challenge, and the key pillars cannot be collapsed. As one of the world's largest production bases of generic drugs, one of the key pillars of India's economy is the pharmaceutical industry. In fiscal 2019, India's total exports of generic drugs amounted to 19.1 billion US dollars (about 134.9 billion yuan). In order to further expand the export scale, before the epidemic, the Indian Ministry of Medicine also formulated the "Pharmaceutical Vision 2020", which aims to make India the main center of global drug research and development, and help India realize the dream of "5 trillion dollar economy" as soon as possible. It's just that skinny reality has given India a head start. Although the country has gradually relaxed the blockade regulations to promote economic activity, it is unlikely to stop the shrinkage of Asia’s third largest economy. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) expects that the Indian economy will decline by 4.5% this year. In sharp contrast to this, under the premise of China's economic recovery, China's generic drug market has also ushered in a vigorous development. The China Pharmaceutical Industry Information Center estimates that the scale of China's generic drug market will exceed the trillion mark in 2020. Reached 14.116 billion yuan.

Indian generic drug giants have already captured this business opportunity, and have accelerated their deployment in the Chinese market. For example, last year, Sipra, India took an important step to establish a joint venture with a Chinese company; generic drugs developed by Dr. Ruidi of India have also won China. Supply rights in 8 provinces, etc. From the perspective of the source of India's economic growth, in order to boost the difficult economy and reverse the crisis of continued economic decline, does India really want China's trillion pharmaceutical market?