New Delhi: Sales of generic medicines have doubled under the Narendra Modi government’s flagship affordable drugs scheme, suggesting a growing preference among Indians for the cheaper variants of branded drugs.
According to government data accessed by ThePrint, the Pradhan Mantri Bharatiya Janaushadhi Pariyojana (PM-BJP) posted a revenue of Rs 200 crore in the last four months (from April to July), against Rs 100 crore in the same period last year.
The government is looking at total sales of Rs 500 crore in 2020-21, approximately 15 per cent higher than last year’s Rs 433 crore.
“We have posted an increase in sales across categories. It’s not a category-specific trend,” Sachin Singh, chief executive officer of the Bureau of Pharma PSUs of India (BPPI), the government arm that executes the Jan Aushadhi scheme, told ThePrint. “For us, all categories have recorded decent growth, starting from anti-infectives (antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal and antiparasitic medicines), respiratory, gynaec, analgesics apart from cardiac and anti-diabetes.”
The growth, Singh said, “shows the impact of our continuous promotion of the scheme, lower pricing of medicines, extensive availability of drugs at our outlets and trust on our brand ambassador PM Modi and his scheme”.
Generic drugs are equally effective substitutes of branded medicines that are manufactured as cheaper alternatives once the latter have had an exclusive hold on the market for a certain period. For instance: Paracetamol is a generic name of the brand Crocin.
In 2017-18, the annual turnover of the PM-BJP stood at Rs 140 crore, which means its 2019-20 revenues represent a jump of almost 190 per cent. The months where the sales have doubled correspond with the emergence and spread of the Covid-19 pandemic across India.
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Sales down at regular pharmacies
While generic medicine sales have risen, industry data shows those of branded drugs are registering a decline.
According to data by research firm AIOCD-AWACS, in April, only cardiac, anti-diabetic and anti-malarial drugs posted growth in sales, at 5-10 per cent. All the remaining categories, including anti-infectives, gastro-intestinal, respiratory, pain and analgesics, gynecological, registered a fall in sales ranging between 4.5 per cent and 35 per cent.
A similar sales trend continued in May, where the overall sales of Indian pharma market dipped by 9 per cent. While the situation improved in June for some categories such as cardiac, anti-diabetic, neurology, dermatology and respiratory, the sales dipped again in July.
Between May and July, sales dipped by 2 per cent. The categories affected included anti-infectives, gastrointestinal, pain and analgesics, dermatology, respiratory, gyaneocology, neurology and sex-stimulants.
“Chronic products, especially cardiac and anti-diabetics, have done reasonably well. Challenge has been for medications, especially antibacterial categories, which post high regular sales… As people haven’t ventured out much (since lockdown imposed in March) and doctors were also unavailable, the sales haven’t happened,” said Hari Natarajan, managing director at Pronto Consult, a firm that specialises in doctor perception studies and pharma market insights in India and West Asia.
“However, retail sales have increased for products such as hand sanitisers, masks, Vitamin C and D, immunity boosting products,” he said.
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Modi’s push for generics
In 2017, PM Narendra Modi had hinted that his government might push for a law that prioritises generic medicines over branded drugs in doctors’ prescriptions.
“Doctors write prescriptions in such a way that poor people do not understand the handwriting, and he has to buy that medicine from private stores at high prices,” he had said.
“We will bring in a legal framework by which if a doctor writes a prescription, he has to write in it that it will be enough for patients to buy generic medicine and he need not buy any other medicine.”
A few days after Modi’s remarks, the Medical Council of India (MCI) started stressing “on putting in place a legal framework to ensure that the doctors prescribe low cost generic medicines to the patients”.
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