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India's pharmaceutical sector has been one of the largest manufacturers of generic drugs globally. During the pandemic, most countries were dependent on imports of generic drugs from India. However, India has been relying on resources from China for Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) which are the raw material for preparing generic drugs. We considered, in our analysis, branded product groups of Paracetamol and Amoxicillin due to their extensive use in the treatment of COVID-19. From a thorough market analysis of both the drugs, we conclude that firms have a monopoly over their brands but compete within the same product group and operate in their respective market under varying prices within certain bandwidths which resembles the feature of monopolistic competitive market. We have introduced compensating function a la Helpman (1981) in the pharmaceutical goods market with the assumption that an 'ideal product' exists among the pharmaceutical goods. Given the framework, this paper explores a general equilibrium model set in a monopolistic competitive product market for branded drugs. We concluded through our propositions that expanding the pharmaceutical sector will increase the employment of unskilled labor under no capacity constraint. We will observe an increase in wages of unskilled labor only under full employment conditions wherein we would observe that the expansion of pharmaceutical good will increase wages in the unskilled labor market. However we obtain an intriguing result wherein we obtain that despite instances of limiting trade dependence on China through implementation of policies like 'Aatmanirbhar Bharat' and 'profit linked incentive schemes', yet to maintain the status quo in the global market for generic drugs, India's dependence on China would increase, owing to API imports due to the pandemic crisis. While India can grab the opportunity in the form of increased demand for pharmaceutical goods to increase the employment level of the economy but this improvement in welfare is also dependent on the degree of dependency of API India has on China. The Indian government has recognized the same through the incorporation of 'Covid-Suraksha' and PLI schemes to minimize import dependency, and accelerate the development of APIs and the production of indigenous drugs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Access to medicines has become a major concern for countries worldwide during the COVID-19 pandemic, as pharmaceutical production and trade have been disrupted in the course of the crisis. Antibiotics are one group of medicines where worries about access have been raised. Access to the right antibiotic at the right time is important not only for curing infections of individual patients, but also for curbing antibiotic resistance globally. Reliable pharmaceutical supply is key to ensuring access to medicines. The global supply of generic medicines has over the last decades been transformed by the rise of India's pharmaceutical industry. In this paper, I trace the changing role of this industry for the global export of antibiotics, by mapping and describing changes in Indian antibiotic exports and discussing these in light of historical processes and events. The paper offers a novel approach to analyse global antibiotic trajectories by using international trade data from publicly available resources combined with a secondary literature review. I show that India's pharmaceutical industry today holds a key role as one of the world's biggest exporters of antibiotic medicines, but with an increasing dependency on China as a supplier of antibiotic ingredients. This produces both opportunities and concerns for access to antibiotics globally. • Offers a novel approach to trace antibiotic and pharmaceutical geographies. • Uses international trade data to map India's role for global antibiotics supply. • Describes that India has become one of the world's biggest exporters of antibiotics. • Shows that India is highly dependent on China for import of antibiotic ingredients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following paper is based in part upon a workshop chaired by the author at the 6th Annual Generic Drug Summit (http://www.iirusa.com/genericsummit/). in Washington, DC, USA, on 28th September. The title of the workshop was ‘Strategic Sourcing in the generic drug industry in the US’. One of the objectives of the workshop was to examine the trend in the level of activity of API manufacturers in developing products for the US market and to discuss some basic principles that the sourcing manager can apply to make good business decisions sourcing APIs for the generic pharmaceutical company. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Asia-Pacific is the largest continent and the most populous. It also presents a study in contrast because of wide income disparity inter and intra country within the continent. Healthcare systems and pharmaceutical policies (disbursements and pricing) vary greatly. Apart from these, population and size of pharmaceutical industry vary from country to country. Public expenditure on health and private expenditure on health also shows variations from country to country. A noteworthy point is that two of the biggest countries in Asia-Pacific region -- China and India have become big pharmaceutical players in the international market especially in generics. Their ability to supply high quality can provide some relief to pharmaceutical expenditure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the international diffusion of new drugs under the post-TRIPS intellectual property rights regime. Even after controlling for drug characteristics and variation in national health expenditure, we find substantial differences across countries in the probability of a drug being commercially available, lowest in countries such as Brazil, China and India with historically weak patent protection. Notwithstanding obligations now in force under the TRIPS Agreement to provide patent protection for pharmaceutical products, sellers of new drugs are much less likely to have market exclusivity in these countries. Conditional upon being launched, a drug is five to 25 times more likely to be generic/multisource in these countries than in, for example, Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]