A BITTER PILL
These are testing times for India’s Rs 3.74 lakh crore pharmaceutical industry. Disruptions in the flow of active pharmaceutical ingredients or API (which are the building blocks of medicines), key starting material (KSM) and drug intermediates from China have made the industry wary. As of now, they are in two minds: whether to produce some of the material in India or turn elsewhere, perhaps to Europe, to source it, though it will be costlier. The rising cost of imported APIs has also hit cost of production and the margins of Indian firms. According to the commerce ministry, between March and May this year, there has been a 20 per cent increase in drug prices due to the impact of COVID-19.
India meets most of its API needs through imports from China. In 2018-19, APIs
