Multinational drug company Mylan has said it will invest $1 billion in the next 5-6 years on capex in India, given the importance of the country's position in world pharma supply-chain, and pitched for the government incentivising research and development activities.

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Mylan global president and executive director Rajiv Malik said the company had been investing close to about $400 million or $450 million towards capex every year and half of it in India.

"Half of that has been invested in India as a rule of thumb. So we have invested about $200 - $250 million in India every year. During the last six or seven years we have invested more than $1 billion in India to upkeep and expand the capacities, he told PTI.

As long as this network is there (in India), we have no other option but continue to invest at the same pace. I would say in the next 5 to 6 years it (investment on capex) would not be less than one billion dollars, he said.

Mylan India's journey started in 2007 after it acquired Matrix laboratories and at that point in time the company was predominantly a manufacturer of active pharmaceutical ingredient (API).

Currently, Maylan has 21 facilities and 15,000 employees working in India.

"Out of 44 plants we have today, India has 21 of those. So India is the backbone of the supply chain. We do about Rs 1,000 crore in Indian commercial market," Malik said.

He said the Indian government needed to incentivise research and development activities being undertaken by pharma companies on drug development and new chemical entities, though the country upkeeps its leadership position APIs and formulations.

According to him, during the initial few years, investments on R&D would not generate revenues for any pharma company and many Chinese companies are now focussing on the activity and competing with large corporations in USA and the Europe.

That is where India needs to catch up. We will have to incentivise the R&D. You incentivise and you create infrastructure for the industry to do more R&D so that it is not burdensome on companies, he opined.

Replying to a query, on the voluntary recall of certain batches of blood pressure drug Valsartan from the USA market, Malik said Mylan has addressed that issue and working with the European and US Authorities.

This is not specific to Mylan alone. We have changed the process to take care of that specific issue, the executive said.

Out of an abundance of caution, these products have been recalled due to detected trace amounts of an impurity, N-nitrosodiethylamine (NDEA) a suspected carcinogenic contained in the API Valsartan, USP, manufactured by Mylan Laboratories Limited.

First Published:Sept 29, 2019 3:30 PM IST