PLI scheme for bulk drugs positive for Indian pharma industry, say experts

The government has approved the applications of Aurobindo Pharma and Karnataka Antibiotics and pharma. The approval is for four products and for both companies, the total investment is Rs 3,700 crore. Sudarshan Jain, Secretary-General, Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance and Nithya Balasubramanian, Director, Sanford Bernstein discussed the development with CNBC-TV18.
“It is a great positive step for the Indian pharmaceutical industry. This scheme covers not only companies but we are also talking of the pharmaceutical clusters. We will also have three clusters in the country which will be announced in due course of time. Rs 6,940 crore have been kept for APIs and Rs 3,000 crore has been kept for pharmaceutical clusters. We need to create an overall ecosystem for this that will encourage the production of APIs in this country. This is a very positive step both from the industry point of view, from the country point of view and overall world point of view because we are talking about diversified supply chain from the world today,” Jain said.
Sanford Bernstein’s Balasubramanian said, “I think the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme should definitely give a kicker to the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) industry. The biggest challenge for Indian companies has been their ability to match the scale that Chinese companies have built over the last several years. The PLI scheme should definitely support as long as the incentives last. It can level the playing field.”
A shift to India from China as the main source of supply in API is possible, Balasubramanian said.
“In most products, we are talking about 15-20 percent kind of price difference between Chinese API and the India APT and the incentives can definitely go a long way towards reducing that differential. I do believe in the next three-four year timeframe we will start seeing customer shift to India as the main source of supply,” she said.
On the valuations front, she said, “Valuations have gone up more than what I would be comfortable with.”

Source : cnbctv18