AWEX, the Walloon Agency for Export and Foreign Investments, in collaboration with Indian Drug Manufacturers Association (IDMA), is hosting a seminar on “Belgium as a Business Hub for the Pharmaceutical Market in Europe” on November 27 in Mumbai.

The Belgian and the Indian delegates will focus on presenting what makes Belgium an ideal location for the pharmaceutical market, not only with Belgium itself, but with the whole of the European Union.

According to the scientific journal Nature Reviews (Drug Discovery), Belgium with its 200 biotech and pharmaceutical companies is a (bio) pharmaceutical concentration zone which is as dense as that of Boston. In the south of Brussels, five hundred km within the turn of this zone, the worldwide consumption of drugs amounts to 30 per cent. Also, 30 per cent of the drugs prescribed by the doctors in Belgium are generic medicines.

It is also one of the 10 most innovative (bio) pharmaceutical valleys in the entire world. A study on the origins of the patents on drugs that have been licensed on the American market in the past decade indicates a remarkable contribution from the researchers from Belgian laboratories: with 26 patents, the country ranks eighth worldwide.

Belgium also offers operational excellence, which is based on strong technical expertise. The innovative drug companies invest heavily in R&D staff in Belgium: nearly 5,000 employees are dedicated full-time to R&D, of which 3,400 are scientific researchers, representing 19 per cent of the researchers in the private sector. Also the amount that is spent on R&D in the sector (€1.8 billion each year) and investment in infrastructure in this country reinforce the strong establishment of the sector in Belgium. In 2009 the innovative (bio) pharmaceutical sector invested €610 million in infrastructure. In the course of the year, a number of pharmaceutical companies, such as Pfizer, Janssen Pharmaceutica, GSK, Baxter and UCB, have invested in research and production facilities here.