‘New patents regime will not affect drug exports’

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New Delhi, Jan 28: India on Friday asserted that amendments to the Patents Act will not affect export of drugs and said the legislation offers higher patent protection and establishes the country’s credibility in the field of drug discovery and intellectual property.

“The patent law in India, complying as it does with international norms for intellectual property, establishes India’s credibility and enormous stren-gth in basic research and drug discovery,” commerce and industry minister Kamal Nath said at the World Economic Forum.

He was speaking at a session on ‘India meets Doha’ which discussed the WTO agreement on Trips in the context of the healthcare industry, an official release said here.

Underlining the possibility of India taking centrestage in drug development in the near future, Nath said it has a $ 10 billion pharmaceutical industry, which is the 4th largest in terms of volume and 13th largest in terms of value.

The global market for generic drugs is currently estimated at $40 billion, and the impending expiry of patents on drugs worth $60 billion during the next five years offers a huge opportunity to India, he said.

India is emerging as a low-cost centre for medical research, he said, adding with higher patent protection, more research would take place here given the cost advantage and large pool of technical and scientific talent in the country.

“Outsourcing in India has become an option. While it provides cost-benefit to giant pharma companies, it is also a huge opportunity for small international companies which do not have well developed drug discovery programmes,” he said. He reiterated the new patents regime would not affect domestic prices as 97% of drugs are already off-patent.