Pharma industry facing lack of raw, print, packaging material

Parveen Arora

Tribune News Service

Karnal, April 12

Amid the countrywide lockdown, the pharma industry is suffering because of the unavailability of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) like paracetamol, amoxicillin, azithromycin, cefuroxime axetil, among others, and the vital raw material used to manufacture tablets, capsules, syrups, etc. The stock of APIs is about to dry out in most of the pharmaceutical industries and, as per the pharma industrialists, the coming 5-6 months are going to be tough for them. Apart from it, they are facing shortage of print and packaging material.

Amid the countrywide lockdown, the pharma industry is suffering because of the unavailability of active pharmaceutical ingredients

There are around 250 pharma industries in Haryana, which export medicines to Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Gulf countries, South Africa, Bangladesh, Europe and others. The whole industry is over-dependent on China for APIs, which imports around 70 per cent of the total APIs to India. Due to worldwide restrictions, the import has been halted and industrialists are not getting it.

“We are facing tough time due to the lockdown as we are not getting APIs as well as print and packaging material. APIs are essential for the manufacturing of medicines, but now our stock is almost non-existent, due to which it is difficult to maintain the flow of medicine production,” said RL Sharma, senior vice-president, Haryana Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association (HPMA).

The industrialists allege they are not getting the supply of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine phosphate, for which other countries are looking towards India. “We are in essential services, but we do not have sufficient material to produce and pack the medicines. We are not receiving the supply of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine phosphate,” said Vikas Pruthi, joint secretary, HPMA.

The industrialists blame they are not getting ethyl alcohol at low rate. “The Union government has issued order to provide ethyl alcohol to the hand sanitiser manufacturing industry at low cost, but most of the distilleries are increasing the prices day by day without any control. Moreover, the Union government has recommended to waive off 300 per cent excise duty from ethyl alcohol for hand sanitiser industry, but no such recommendations is being followed to provide hand sanitiser at low cost,” he added.

The industrialists demand that the Union government should ensure the availability of APIs at reasonable rates, so that they can produce medicines. “The APIs should be controlled across the country to restrict black marketing,” said Raman Gupta, general secretary, Karnal Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association.