India pharma exports surging despite cough syrup deaths - trade body

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

pharmaceutical exports this fiscal year are set to grow nearly twice as fast as last year to hit sales of $27 billion, driven by strong U.S. buying, a government-backed trade body told Reuters, despite deaths linked to Indian-made cough syrups. The robust forecast comes against the backdrop of earlier concerns from the government that last year's deaths of dozens of children in Gambia, which the World Health Organization (WHO) linked to drugs made in India, had «adversely impacted the image of India's pharmaceutical products across the globe». Two other cough syrups made in India killed 19 children in Uzbekistan around December, according to the Uzbekistan government. India is the world's third largest maker of drugs by volume after the United States and China, and senior pharma trade official Udaya Bhaskar said the country was too big a player for buyers to move away because of «these aberrations» in Gambia and Uzbekistan. «As far as the Gambia and Uzbekistan incidents are concerned, if you see in terms of the image of the country, there is a dent,» Bhaskar, director general of the Pharmaceuticals Export Promotion Council of India (Pharmexcil), told Reuters on Tuesday.

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«But if you see our (April-June) exports, they have grown. We are doing very well in the U.S. market, we are growing at more than 10% there. In the past four-five months, the growth in exports shows that people have not taken very, very seriously (any concerns about) the quality of Indian pharmaceuticals.» India's pharma exports rose 3.25% in the year to March 31 to $25.4 billion and Bhaskar said it was set to grow by about 6.3% to $27 billion this fiscal year. Sales