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Pharmaceuticals Export Promotion Council of India (Pharmexcil) has said that India’s pharma exports witnessed over 18% growth to $24.44 billion during the last financial year (FY21) against $20.58 billion in FY20. Udaya Bhaskar, Director General of Pharmexcil said ‘We have observed a big leap in our exports in the month of March 2021 which is $2.3 billion (figures for March are provisional) and is highest among the exports of all the months of this financial year, the growth rate for this month is 48.5% against the exports in March 2020 ($1.54 billion)’.

He said growth rate seems relatively big as the exports of March 2020 was crunched due to lockdown across the world and supply chain disruption. He added when the global pharma market is negatively grown by 1-2% in 2020, there is a big surge in demand for Indian made generics owing to its quality and affordability, and drug formulations and Biologicals is the second largest Principal commodity being exported by India.

He also said the Pharma exports body is expecting big growth in Indian vaccine exports in the coming years and the government policy on PLI (production Linked Incentive) scheme will also help the domestic pharma to grow by reducing import dependence and develop export potential in the days to come as most of the countries are looking at India for APIs (active pharmaceutical ingredient).

North America is the largest exporting region for Indian pharmaceuticals with more than 34% share. Country wise exports to the US, Canada and Mexico have recorded a growth of 12.6, 30 and 21.4% respectively. South Africa being the second largest exporting country, recorded a big jump of 28% growth while Europe was the third largest exporting region which has recorded approximately 11% growth over previous year.