Bangladesh races ahead on obesity drug exports

Indian drug­makers such as Dr. Reddy’s and Sun Phar­ma­ceut­ical Indus­tries are already play­ing catch-up with Bangladesh, even as they pre­pare to enter the global mar­ket for gen­eric sema­glu­tide—a block­buster dia­betes and weight-loss drug—fol­low­ing approval from the Delhi High Court.
Lever­aging the coun­try’s ‘least-developed coun­try’ (LDC) status under World Trade Organ­iz­a­tion rules, Banglade­shi man­u­fac­tur­ers have been pro­du­cing and export­ing low-cost cop­ies of sema­glu­tide for more than two years.
Under the WTO exemp­tion, India’s east­ern neigh­bour is not required to grant full pat­ent exclus­iv­ity for phar­ma­ceut­ical products until 2030, allow­ing local com­pan­ies to reverse-engin­eer and man­u­fac­ture pat­en­ted drugs—a flex­ib­il­ity India
lost in 2005 after becom­ing a WTO sig­nat­ory.
Using this exemp­tion, Banglade­shi firms have flooded non­pat­en­ted mar­kets in Latin Amer­ica and Asia-pacific with gen­eric sema­glu­tide well ahead of their Indian rivals.
Seven local com­pan­ies make and sell the drug in Bangladesh and there are at least eight brands in the local mar­ket, includ­ing Novo Nor­d­isk’s Ozempic.
Four of these seven com­paer­ate nies export sema­glu­tide, the largest being Bex­imco, Ziska Phar­ma­ceut­ic­als Ltd, ACI Ltd and Incepta Phar­ma­ceut­ic­als, Ravinder Singha, man­aging dir­ector of Firm­link Pharma, a cross-bor­der sourcing com­pany with oper­a­tions in 15 coun­tries in Latin Amer­ica, APAC and Africa, told Mint.
To be sure, India has an edge over Bangladesh in exports to highly reg­u­lated mar­kets such as the US and Europe, which com­prise the bulk of India’s pharma exports. Entry into such reg­u­lated mar­kets will depend on approvals as pat­ents expire, and brand-build­ing will be key, experts said.
The com­pet­i­tion from Bangladesh is likely to be stiff in less reg­u­lated mar­kets in the restof-the-world (ROW). “ROW com­pet­i­tion is more severe from coun­tries like Bangladesh, where reg­u­la­tions are not so strict, com­pli­ances are not mon­itored,” Namit Joshi,
chair­man of the Phar­ma­ceut­ic­als Export Pro­mo­tion Coun­cil of India, or Pharmex­cil, told Mint. “Bangladesh would cur­rently account for the biggest share of sema­glu­tide exports to non-pat­en­ted regions in Latin Amer­ica and APAC (Asia Pacific) as their products are already tried and tested.”
Earlier this month, the Delhi High Court, in sep­ar­ate judge­ments, allowed Dr Reddy’s Labor­at­or­ies and Sun Pharma to man­u­fac­ture and export gen­eric sema­glu­tide to coun­tries where innov­ator Novo Nor­d­isk does not hold pat­ent pro­tec­tion. But both com­pan­ies can­not sell the drug in India until Novo Nor­d­isk loses its pat­ent-exclus­iv­ity rights in the coun­try in March 2026.
Both com­pan­ies have already star­ted man­u­fac­tur­ing gen­eric sema­glu­tide, their coun­sels told the court, with Dr Reddy’s hav­ing inves­ted ₹1,000 crore in man­u­fac­tur­ing, accord­ing to its sub­mis­sions to the court.
Quer­ies sent to Dr Reddy’s and Sun Pharma remained unanswered until press time.
Exports from Bangladesh largely go to coun­tries that don’t have pat­ent rules in force. However, Bangladesh also exports the drug to coun­tries that ask for con­sign­ments on com­pas­sion­ate grounds. It even exports to coun­tries on a “named-patient” basis, where a hos­pital can request an unau­thor­ised medi­cine dir­ectly from a man­u­fac­turer for a group of patients under its care.
The coun­try has also syn­thes­ised tirze­patide, the chem­ical com­pound in Eli Lilly’s weightloss drug Moun­jaro, and has been man­u­fac­tur­ing the drug for the past seven months, said Singha.
Source : Pressreader