Indonesia to Drugmakers: Build Factories Here, Or Get Out
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Want to sell prescription medicines in Indonesia? Better start building a factory there.
The nation’s health ministry recently decreed that foreign drug makers will only be allowed to sell products in the country if they build production facilities there.
“I don’t think they’d dare leave,” the nation’s health minister told the Associated Press this week. “But if they do, it’s their loss.”
Of course, it might also be a loss for sick people unable to get medicine.
Thirteen companies, including giants such as Eli Lilly, Merck Sanofi-Aventis, and AstraZeneca, sell drugs in Indonesia but don’t have factories there, the AP says. The new rule isn’t set to take effect for two years.
With sales growth likely to slow in the U.S. and Western Europe in the coming years, the drug industry is looking to middle-income countries such as Indonesia as key growth markets. But there have been some bumps in the road.
Brazil and Thailand made headlines when they decided to break the patents on branded drugs.
And Indonesia itself announced last year that it would no longer share bird flu samples collected within the country with foreign researchers, on the grounds that any vaccine developed from the samples was likely to benefit the […]
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