BANGALORE: Chinese pharmaceutical companies are posing a serious threat to their Indian counterparts. As usual the Chinese who are past-masters at reverse engineering have started manufacturing drugs at prices cheaper than Indian drugs.

Active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) units in India have already faced severe competition in the country during the last ten years leading to several units shutting down but the threat now is to the formulations industry. The Indian pharmaceutical industry is lobbying hard to ensure that it does not meet the same fate as the API industry.

Accroding to Pharmabiz.com, the government at the most can impose some kind of anti-dumping duty but that’s only a temporary measure. The real solution lies in investing more in R&D and moving up the value chain. This brings into question the flexibility of certain provisions of patent laws.

According to the recent PharmaBiz report, cheaper import of Chinese formulations threaten Indian formulation producers. After its onslaught on active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) units in India which saw closure of several bulk drug units in the country during last ten years, cheaper Chinese formulations are posing a major threat to the Indianpharmaceutical sector.

Some major Chinese formulation companies have nowstarted offering low priced drug formulations to the Indian market.

A restrictive interpretation of the laws would make it rather difficult to obtain pharmaceutical patents thereby discouraging companies from investing substantially in R&D.

However a more balanced, flexible interpretation of section would reward pharmaceutical innovation more appropriately leading to an increase in investments in pharmaceutical R&D.

The sources from Himalaya Drug Company said, "This would involve some farsighted policy making on part of the Indian government on an extremely sensitive issue. If the high decibel coverage of the Novartis case is anything to go by it is unlikely that the Indian Government will want to bring upon itself another battle with increasingly shrill civil society groups." According to sources, the first target of the Chinese formulation industry is medicine dispensing markets in the country.