The eighth Pharma Summit organised by the Gujarat State Food and Drug Control Administration (FDCA) on November 27 in collaboration with CII and supported by Government of Gujarat (GoG) to sensitise the prospective investors about the Vibrant Gujarat 2011 focused on identifying the potential areas of growth in the domestic market.

The summit, as part of Vibrant Gujarat 2011, which is aimed at attracting investors of pharma and biotech industry to the state, agreed that the Government needs to be pro active to attract more investors to India as there are chances of many investors preferring China as investment destination over India.

The government was asked to deliberate on the issue regarding stable policies as the present policy environment is very unstable and planning should be at least for 10 years so that companies can in turn plan accordingly. The industry believes that unless a commercially viable distribution model is in place, the industry cannot achieve a proper growth.

Dr Surinder Singh, Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) who was also present at the summit acknowledged that Government needs to adopt a more comprehensive long term policy approach and minimise frequency of policy changes. He also expressed the view that dialogue between the Government and the industry is required to strike the right balance for future developments. He also conveyed that looking at the current scenario he is expecting sweeping changes in next 1-2 years which will plug the policy and system gaps.

The summit focused on many issues like the need to find ways to reduce prices and make drugs affordable to the larger number of population, and removing the other barriers to medicine access by focusing on proper infrastructure, etc. apart from that another there is a huge difference in potential and market size estimates in different reports making it necessary to have new business model is to be introduced in the industry for which it is essential to develop the rural market.

Hemant Koshia, commissioner, FDCA informed that over the time there is a change in the way foreign counties look at India. Earlier the MNC's used to mostly have alliances or JVs with Indian companies rather than innovative companies coming to India. However he expressed that with increased understanding, more and more innovative companies are expected to come in.

By 2020 India is expected to be among the top countries in the world in pharma sector. According to Koshia, this summit was aimed at providing a platform to highlight opportunities and challenges faced by the industry and how to tackle this issues.

He added, “We expect Vibrant Gujarat 2011 to be more successful than last year and go beyond MoU signing procedures to disseminate knowledge and do business in more comfortable way and to take business of interested parties forward.”

Compared to last years VG 2009 event which had13 events planned, the VG 2011 will have 32 events mostly aimed to assemble people to think, suggest way forward and act.