18% pa Growth Forecast For Indian Pharma Industry

India's pharmaceutical industry is expected to maintain a healthy growthof 18% annually for the next five years, more than twice the likely growth of the world drug industry over the same period, according to a study by India's Export and Import bank.

While India's annual output of bulk drugs and formulations is running at about 90 billion rupees ($2.52 billion), or 2% of world output, the large domestic market and relatively inexpensive trained manpower has enabled the country to emerge as a low-cost production center, said EXIM bank's latest paper, entitled Pharmaceuticals and herbal medicines; a sector study.

It also notes that herbal and ayurvedic (traditional Indian) drugs are particularly being developed for export. The study points out that production value of such formulations increased from 12 billion rupees in 1980-81 to nearly 80 billion rupees in 1994-95.