Indo's Take-it-or-leave-it

Source: Channelnewsasia

Foreign drug companies can quit Indonesia if they do not like new rules requiring them to have local production facilities, Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari said on Monday.

"If they want to get licences (to sell their products) they have to invest here also, not just take advantage of the Indonesian market," Supari told Dow Jones Newswires.

"They can't just operate like a retailer here, with an office size that's three metres by three and make billions of rupiah. That is not fair."

Under the new rules, foreign companies have a two-year grace period in which to set up production facilities.

Those who fail to do so would be banned from selling their products or distributing them through companies that do have plants in Indonesia.

"If they want to go away, go ahead," she said. She added that India and China had already enacted such requirements.

There are 29 international pharmaceutical companies marketing their products in Indonesia, with total market share of 25 percent.

OK, this Supari woman said foreign pharmaceutical companies will be given two years to build a pharmaceutical production plant or their products will be banned from being sold in Indonesian market.

Sometimes I do wonder if politicians or ministers actually consult with specialists before they make any statement or impose a law. Two years to build a plant or you'll be banned? Perhaps they think that building a plant is just another LEGO game. Stack some bricks together, install some plastic reactor tanks and rubber pipes and get the pharmaceutical active ingredient from their home garden. So easy huh? Even a 3-year-old kid knows how to do it.

Here comes the logic, getting a sound reaction pathway takes sometime. Next, you have to consider how to conduct the reaction in a suitable reactor configuration, temperature, pressure, etc. Then, linking all the little pieces of components like pumps, reactors, separators, pipes... together. After that, coming out with control and safety measures, like temperature control. OK, assume all these could be done within 5 months (I bet your reactor may explode anytime). I certainly believe it'd take sometime to build the plant too. Again, assume you could build your plant in 5-month time (now your entire plant may collapse anytime). Finally, you plant is ready to start operating. What about regulations? People somehow forgot the fact that those DRUGS are not cat food leh... Countries like Singapore require a least 1 year (for a well known products with adequate safety records) to get your drug approved. Now, we are talking about drugs produced from new given-only-freaking-two-years-to-build plant. What do you think?

If you want people to transfer technologies and create jobs, you must at least let people to be adequately prepared, mustn't you? Yeah, I'll just build a packaging plant to hire some workers to paste labels on boxes and bottles. Come on, it's still a plant! If you were me, would you buy a drug produced from a given-only-freaking-two-years-to-build plant? No, right? It would only harm Indo's drug reliability.

Good luck everyone.

OK, so this is the woman who suggested the rule:

Indonesian health minister Siti Fadilah Supari

The Broken Tooth says
::So long, farewell; I hate to say Good Bye::