Industry wants flexibility in choosing anti-counterfeit solutions for export.

While calling for different mechanisms for different markets, the pharmaceutical industry has urged the government to draw up a list of anti-counterfeit technology solutions for export of pharmaceutical products and give flexibility to choose one or more by the exporters.

The industry representatives, who deposed before the packaging committee on counterfeit issue by Pharmexcil, wanted the government to evaluate anti-counterfeiting measures from dual perspective of regulator and consumers. The views of the industry have been recently submitted to the Commerce Ministry which had asked the Pharmexcil to find out feasible technology solutions to put at rest the controversy regarding alleged export of counterfeit drugs from India. The Pharmexcil had taken the support of a consultant to identify the technologies before summing up the recommendations and submitting them to the ministry.

``The SMEs are a critical component of the success of India/s pharma exports and any option suggested should not hurt their capability to compete in global markets. High end technology solutions would force SMEs to be at the mercy of the vendors pricing and recurring cost which would increase their price per product. Complicated methodology will be cumbersome and problematic for SME sector to implement,’’ the industry representatives from the sector told the packaging committee, while arguing for flexibility of choices.

The representatives said that any technology suggested should be cost effective, user-friendly and workable worldwide. At the same time the solutions may differ from market to market and the country cannot have a `one size that fits all’’ type. For developed or regulated markets like USA and Europe, anti-counterfeit measures to be adopted would largely be governed by specific regulatory requirements while in non-regulated markets, the challenges are unique as regulations are minimal and pricing of products is a critical element, the industry viewed. Holograms, UV Inks and 2D barcode were suggested by the industry which strongly recommending random identity system using 2D barcode. The report by Pharmexcil thus had suggested holograms, barcoding technologies and digital mass serialization/unique numbers. At the recent high-level meeting, the Commerce Ministry had finally shortlisted the barcoding technology to be introduced after sometime.

Meanwhile, the small scale units were aggrieved for not getting enough representation while deciding on the technology. Out of the eight companies selected to represent before the Pharmexcil panel, only two were from the SME sector. ``We are not against the barcoding technology to stop counterfeiting. But we were not given enough representation. We will raise the issue with the Pharmexcil through the office-bearers,’’ an industry leader said.

Source : pharmabiz.com