KARACHI: Major pharmaceutical companies have put on hold all expansion plans pending resolution of the Drugs Pricing Policy while investments are only being made in minimum upgradation of quality standards in order to sustain ongoing operations, a Pharma Bureau (PB) high-up said.

Talking to Dawn PB Chairman Kazim Husnain said many new therapies (including life-saving drugs) are pending approval with the DRAP’s registration board. “New and improved therapies being launched globally are not readily available for patients in Pakistan,” he said.

Mr Husnain claimed only 40 per cent of the country’s population has access to modern medicines.

When asked how many new drugs – if any – were introduced by PB members in the last few years, he said, “the bureau neither collects such data nor has information on the business portfolio strategies of its individual members and hence it is difficult to comment.”

However this information, he added, is available with Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) based on the applications for new medicines submitted for registration during the past three years.

On market reports that some more companies are planning to pack up from Pakistan, Mr Husnain informed that in the recent past multinationals like Merck Sharp & Dohme, Bristol Myers Squibb, Schering-Plough, Organon, Astra Zeneca and Johnson & Johnson have exited the market, ‘creating a vacuum’.

He said it is correct that manufacturing and sales of a number of life-saving essential medicines have been discontinued because of non-viability. However PB cannot determine the number of such products as this is for DRAP to evaluate, he added.

The chairman claimed the share of PB members in the local market has declined to 36 per cent in 2016 from 43pc in 2012 as per Information Medical Statistics (IMS).

Pakistan’s pharma sector is estimated at $2.9 billion with a Cumulative Average Growth (period 2012-2016) at 9.75pc in US dollar value terms (growth in volume terms at end of Q2, 2016 was 10.53pc on moving annual turnover basis).

Mr Husnain suggested that as long as a commercially viable and transparent Drugs Pricing Policy is not adopted in Pakistan, manufacturers and importers would continue to rationalise their respective portfolios and be compelled to avoid selling medicines which remain commercially unviable.

With the right regulatory framework and a secure environment, he said Pakistan is ideally positioned to not just see a huge inflow of investment in the country but could be a strong exporter of finished pharmaceutical products.

Published in Dawn October6th, 2016