Keep your eye on the drugs

India’s High Commissioner Virendra Gupta would have done well as a high-powered  marketing executive  for an Indian conglomerate. So happy is the High Commissioner with the way trading has gone and continues to go between the two countries that he took the opportunity to reveal that Indian business was now looking at developing greater trading in pharmaceuticals and he urged business men in this sector to take a more serious look at it. Addressing a luncheon meeting at the Rasam restaurant in the City of Grand Bazaar last week, Mr Gupta offered an enthusiastic invitation to the TT business community to be part of the delegation to India’s largest Trade Fair in November. He pointed out that drugs were being produced in India far cheaper than other countries and in some cases “one-fifeenth of the price of those produced by the multi-nationals.” He explained however that his country was in fact, having some difficulties with its patent laws.”

He added that a lot of emphasis was now being placed on drugs to combat the HIV/AIDS epidemic now afflicting so many regions of the world. Although Mr Gupta didn’t say so, the Asian country is rapidly gaining recognition in this and allied fields to the point that the United Kingdom was now sending blood and urine samples for analysis in India. Earlier this week, it was revealed that India’s fledgling bio-technology sector hoped to generate a million jobs and investments of $10 billion by 2010. Industry leaders are putting their hopes on low cost, highly-skilled knowledge workers to tap new opportunities emerging in drug discovery, contract research, clinical trials and bio-informatics to achieve the goal. These two developments represent a quantum leap in the sector, given that India has already established a name for itself in the world of pharmaceuticals and, of course, this widens the playing field for local businessmen to become more involved in India’s pharmaceuticals industry.

Other areas which High Commissioner Gupta highlighted as areas his country wanted to push in the coming years were hand tools, auto spare parts, light manufacturing and electronics. He believed that these were all areas with great potential for local businessmen, which they should explore to the fullest. For local businessmen trading can become even easier following an initiative of Republic Bank and the Exim Bank of India, which has set up an (US)$8 million line of credit, which can be accessed by local traders. “If the facility proves to be worthwhile, it will be expanded,” said Mr Gupta. He pointed however, that individual businesses could continue to make their own arrangements with their trading partners in India. The facility would offer businessmen credit at three and a half points below that which would normally apply. Minimum credit would be (US)$10,000 and the maximum would be 90 percent of the contract value and the time frame would between six months and five years.

He said the line of Indian products on the local market was expanding and the High Commissioner exhorted local business to push on. “If there is a trend, go with it and see how best you can benefit. Those who have existing business opportunities with India can now increase their lines,” he said. On bureaucratic barriers  Gupta said, “We will like to work with you from beginning to beyond. I assure you we would help in solving the problems.” India’s trade with Trinidad and Tobago has doubled in the last three years and the Indian envoy did not hide the fact that he wants those statistics to keep getting better and made a direct pitch for “new players in the marketplace.” But he hastened to add, “while we want new players, we don’t want to downplay the role of the older players.” He said people were looking at the increasing attractiveness of Indian products and he wanted to get more and more people to enter the market and to buy quality goods. “It is my hope,” he went on, “ that with good promotional effort and competition, the result would be better prices.”