Hyderabad: Indigenous pharma firms need support to manufacture raw materials

Hyderabad: There is no dearth of human resources and industry is ready to take up the challenge in the global competition. But what is needed is policy support from the governments like strengthen the much-needed ecosystem to handle the crisis like Covid-19 says Dr C Linga Reddy, Chairman and Managing Director, Bio-Vin Research Laboratories said in an interview with VRC Phaniharan.

Given the fallout of the current Covid-19 situation, is our pharmaceutical industry in a position to compete and what are the key issues the industry is facing?

Most of the time the basic raw material is being sourced from China. Now, the supplies of the same are not reliable. So there is a need to encourage the indigenous industries to focus on manufacturing the basic raw material. Earlier, the industries in the country did not evince much interest in indigenous raw material as the imported one was 30 times cheaper. Government's should take the initiative to encourage indigenous institutions.

Where does Telangana stands in this whole picture. Particularly, when it is intending to come up with pharma city?

Encouraging industries based on the basic raw materials available within the state would benefit Telangana. Many major manufacturing industries and research labs in pharmaceuticals are located in and around Hyderabad. If they can get basic raw materially locally it would benefit the State.

What kind of eco-system is needed in the short-term and long-term to give a fillip to the industry to make it globally competitive?

Governments can do a lot of things in this direction. In China, they provide loans to the manufacturers and give advance for the exports which are recovered from the industry. A similar system also exists in the USA. We should emulate such systems and policies and come up with policy backups providing incentives for the industries to come and proactively engage in the manufacturing.

Do you face any issues in terms of human capital supply for making the pharmaceutical industry globally competitive?

No. there is no dearth of skilled human capital in the country. We have credible resources on this front to tap and compete at the global level.

What is the time scale we can expect that the pharmaceutical industry can play in a situation like the current crisis?

First thing that we need to focus on is to get rid of the COVID. Then, the Centre might come up with certain steps in this direction, as they have already taken some initiatives in this direction. In a post-COVID scenario, we can expect many things to happen in this direction.

For the past several months the top engineering institutions like IITs, engineering colleges etc have been coming up with several interventions and innovation along with the industry in the country's fight against Covid-19 . Why was it that we could not witness the same earlier?

So far Hi-Tech sector had impacted the people from going to science as that sector provides good salaries and other facilities. However, now, it is coming back, and more and more people are taking science seriously. I am optimistic that it is going to improve a lot more in the future.

In a nutshell, what should be the driver of any likely policy that might help the industry?

To fulfill the existing deficiencies the government should encourage the private sector as it happens in countries like USA. This would help in strengthening not only a competitive global value product manufacturing but also to achieve self-reliance if encouragement was given to the indigenous industry.