India’s wholesale liquidator sells $4.7bn worth of drugs
The wholesale liquidation company that is in charge of managing the assets of the country’s drug manufacturing industry has sold $4bn worth, including medicines, in the past two years, the Financial Times reported.
The company, Ranbaxy, has also been able to keep a large share of its assets.
Its shares have soared by more than 12 per cent in the last two years.
The drugs it sold include an antibiotic called nevirapine for treatment of a serious but treatable form of pneumonia.
It also sold $2.7m worth of other drugs that had been off-patent and unapproved.
“In the past 12 months, the company has made a total of $4,827.5m from its portfolio of over 2,300 drugs, including over $2m in revenue in FY2017-18 and over $1m in FY18-19, according to filings with the Companies House,” the Times reported, quoting sources familiar with the matter.
“These assets include an additional $1.3m in non-federal assets and $1,600,000 in assets held in foreign banks,” it added.
India has over 200,000 licensed drug companies, according the countrys National Drug Control Organisation (NDCO), but the number of licensed manufacturers is shrinking.NDCO has estimated that only 4,000 new drugs are licensed each year.
A new NDCO report last year said India is expected to see over $50bn in revenue from drug sales by 2019, a 15 per cent increase on the year before.
