ISLAMABAD: The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) has expressed concern over unusual high annual legitimate requirements of ephedrine in Pakistan.

Unlike other countries, Pakistan’s requirements remained unchanged in recent years. A court case on the alleged domestic diversion of significant amounts of ephedrine in Pakistan has been ongoing since 2012, with no conclusion emerged yet, the INCB says in its annual report 2017 released the other day.

The annual legitimate requirements for combined bulk and pharmaceutical preparations containing pseudoephedrine for Pakistan was below 50 tonnes between 2013 and 2017 against the global average of annual requirements of 14 tonnes in 2017, the report says.

Syria and Turkey together with Pakistan had annual legitimate requirements of close to 50 tonnes, while Iran exceeded beyond 50 tonnes in 2013 but declined to roughly 16 tonnes in 2017. Four countries whose annual requirement was less than 12 tonnes were Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Afghanistan and the United Arab Emirates.

The INCB asked all governments to establish and regularly review all estimates of annual legitimate requirements taking into account the prevailing market conditions and inform the board of any changes. Furthermore, the board asked the governments to list specific needs and uses for each substance and to clearly indicate if there is no need for those substances by inserting a value of “zero”.

Pakistan was also identified as the origin of some 7,000 ephedrine tablets reported seized by the authorities in Hong Kong. During 2016 and the first 10 months of 2017, countries in the Gulf region were identified as transit countries for shipments of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine from India bound for destinations in Africa.

The amounts of ephedrine seized in 2016 continued to fluctuate between 35 and 40 tonnes, much lower than the amounts reported seized in the preceding five-year period.

In April and November 2016, Pakistani authorities objected to the delivery of two shipments of acetic anhydride, totaling 26,500 litres, from China because the importing companies were not authorised to import the substance into the country.

The INCB report says that the amount of acetic anhydride reported seized in Pakistan in 2016 was the largest ever reported by the Pakistani authorities, and nearly eight times higher than in 2015.

Published in Dawn, March 5th, 2018