For Indian pharmaceutical industry, maintaining the present export growth is more critical than its domestic sales today because of growing volume and value. Currently India exports almost 40 per cent of the pharmaceutical production valued at 3.78 billion dollars to over 200 countries. Nearly 55 per cent of these exports are formulations and the rest are bulk drugs. Almost 35 per cent of bulk drug requirements of the US pharma industry are sourced from India and the country is also a major supplier of generic drugs to the US healthcare system. Thus the US continues to be the largest importer of Indian drugs and pharmaceuticals accounting for 17 per cent of India's total pharma exports. Going by the current trend, India should be exporting more than 7 billion dollars worth of drugs and pharmaceuticals by 2007-08. One reason for this kind of export drive is the attraction of huge margins from generic exports in the US and European markets. Such margins are not possible from domestic sales but are necessary for the drug companies to support the huge research expenditure they are incurring now. Barring Cipla almost all top 10 Indian pharma companies have been pouring in huge sums of money into new molecular research for the last four to five years with no hope of a blockbuster in the near future. Among these, Ranbaxy and Dr. Reddy's are the leaders and are in serious financial crisis with their annual R&D spend ranges from 12 to 18 per cent of sales. The prospects for these companies have turned bad with the recent sharp fall in margins of generic drugs in the US market. Competition from the US based generic companies and of late, even from branded companies like Novartis is pushing down the generic margins to the great disadvantage of Indian companies. Exploring new and emerging markets has, therefore, become quite a necessity for Indian pharma industry. The joint initiative by FICCI and Pharmaceutical Export Promotion Council to organize a pharma & health conference last week with the participation of African, ASEAN and GCC countries in Hyderabad is probably with this objective. Africa stands out as a potential region for Indian pharma exports with almost no domestic industry in most of these countries. Currently India exports about Rs.1800 crore worth of drugs and pharmaceuticals to Africa and Nigeria accounts for more than 20 per cent of this business. The market is quite tough to enter with stringent regulatory practices followed by the governments of these countries. The recent experience of blacklisting of some of the Indian exporters by the Nigerian authorities is a case in point. The exporters have been blacklisted on charge of exporting counterfeit drugs. What has been clarified in the conference is that they exported the products without registration. Regulatory officials from Nigeria and Ghana also indicated that their governments could ban products from India to protect their domestic industry. From the interactions with the officials from these countries it is becoming clear that there are a lot of misgivings about the Indian pharma industry amongst these nations. To address these issues, the commerce ministry and Pharmexcil should have to conduct many more detailed talks with the drug authorities of these countries. Otherwise discriminatory and unfair practices against Indian exporters will continue to crop up from this region.