S KOREA AHEAD CHINA CATCHING UP WITH INDIA

THE ECONOMIC TIMES NEW DELHI FRIDAY 25 APRIL 2008
The fast growing clinical trials industry in the country is facing stiff competition from Asian countries like china and South Korea. While South Korea has already surged ahead of India, china is also fast catching up.
According to the USFDA registry of ‘industry - sponsored active clinical trials.’ South Korea is conducting 282 trials and the number is growing almost 80%. Compared to this Indian companies is carrying out 236 studies and growing at 61%.China is not far behind with 150 studies and growing at 64%,says Pfizer director (medical & regulatory affairs) Dr Chandrasekhar Potkar.
Currently‘s India’s clinical trials industry is estimated to be around $300 million and projected to touch $2billion by 2010.However.this still a small pie of the global outsourcing market estimated to be around $30 billion.’ Amongst Asian countries, India had a headstart having initiated global clinical research more than a decade ago. Countries like China. Korea and Taiwan joined the bandwagon more recently but surging ahead rapidly. These countries should catch up and overtake India in the volume of work in no time,’Mr Potkar added.
Global companies say that despite the clear advantage of language proficiency, skilled manpower and ethical diversity, India’s lack of overall capacity and inability to enforce intellectual property rights (IPR) may see the country lose the upper hand. However, industry sources representing Indian drug makers, pointed out those global makers will continue to flock to India. ‘When the Satwant committee recommendation had put several safeguards on data exclusivity, global companies threatened that they would not conduct trials or invest in India. But, on the contrary, discovery companies also prefer to to go to countries where the regulatory regime is relaxed and therefore lobbying for minimal governments in interference in India.’
FOR COS, IT’S TRIAL AND ERROR
$ 30B - Size of global clinical outsourcing market
$300 - MEstimated size of India’s clinical trial Industry
$2b - Projected size of Indian market by 2010
30k-50k - Shortage of clinical research staff
Advantages- Language proficiency, skilled manpower, ethic diversity
Weak Points Lack of capacity and inability to enforce intellectual property rights (IPR).