Argentinian government issued a notification permitting import of generic formulations from Indian pharmaceutical exporters. With this India becomes the 27th country to supply generic formulations to Argentina, a highly regulated market, further establishing India's expertise in this field and proving the capabilities of Indian manufacturers as a supplier of high quality raw materials at the global platform.

For the last 15 years, Argentina imported generic formulations from only 26 countries, listed with them and this move comes as an outcome of the huge effort put by the commerce ministry who had been successful in projecting the qualities of the Indian formulators.

Dr P V Appaji, director general of Pharmexcil, the commerce ministry have been ardently pushing for this matter on behalf of the industry with the Argentinian government, by sending delegates from the ministry and industry to pursue this matter at the earnest with their Argentinian counterparts.

“This comes as a huge relief to the scores of domestics formulation manufacturers, who had been unable to export to Argentina due to their market policy that did not allow Indian manufacturer's to export to the country. This landmark decision opens up new business avenues for the Indian formulation  manufacturers, who till now have been unable to explore the market. We are very happy with the outcome and will keep on positively working for the industry to further explore business opportunity for them.,” said Dr Appaji, who has been closely associated with this cause.

With this inclusion India becomes the part of the countries included in the annexure 2, which includes other 13 countries, allowed to export to Argentina. In other words any company with WHO GMP certificate i.e. the COPP from these 14 countries can export to Argentina. While the other set of 13 countries belong to the regulated market and are allowed to export to Argentine on the GMP certificate issued by their regulators like MHRA, US FDA etc.

Interestingly, in spite of having no permission to import formulations from India, API are permitted to be imported from India.