The Pharmaceutical Export Promotion Council of India (Pharmexcil) is all set to organise ‘India Pavilion’ at CPhI Japan for the fourth time in a row since 2007. This year the event is being held from April 24-26.

Japan has always been a tough market for India to tap. Its regulatory set-up for pharmaceuticals is one of the toughest in the world. Each and every minute product to get registration undergoes comprehensive and complete test procedures which is not only a time consuming procedure but also is a tedious and complex process. “Initially it is an uphill task for any company to enter into Japanese market, but once you are through there is no looking back, but it’s not easy for many to pass through such stringent regulatory procedures. Our main aim is to encourage and give a pushing strength to the SMEs and Medium scale Indian pharmaceutical companies to enter in to Japanese market. And this will definitely help the Indian exports to grow in the long run,” said Dr Appaji, DG Pharmexcil.

Despite being a highly regulated market, many Indian firms have succeeded to enter the Japanese markets. Of late global events like CPhIs have also enabled the Indian firms to showcase their innovations in drug development and have attracted the attention of many big global firms. Moreover the quality and cost effectiveness of the Indian generics is what attracting the world today and Japan is not an exception.

Since 2010 onwards, there is a gradual improvement of India exports to the Japanese markets. India's export to Japan is growing at 78 per cent with US$ 144 million during the year 2011-12.

If one looks at the exports statistics of India from 2010-11 to 2011-12, Indian bulk drug exports to Japan have increased more than 50 per cent from $58 million in 2010-11 to $87 in 2011-12. Similarly the exports of Formulations have jumped from $9 million in 2010-11 to $29 million with an increase of 216.60 per cent year on year (YoY). A part from Bulk drugs and Formulations, the Herbal exports from India to Japan have also shown almost 100 per cent increase from $ 14 million to $28 million during the same period.