Ahmedabad, Dec 12 : With the advantage of low production cost, trained manpower and increasing demand of low priced quality drugs, the Indian pharmaceutical sector has come up as a favourite destination for investment among the developing countries.

The Pharma Industry is estimated to be worth 4.5 billion dollars, growing at about 8 to 9 percent annually.

Part of this success story belongs to Gujarat, which has developed into a major hub of pharmaceutical industry with spectacular growth during the last two decades in the sphere of production of drugs and pharmaceuticals.

The state''''s two principal industrial cities Ahmedabad and Baroda have evolved as major drug and healthcare equipment manufacturing hubs.

With the growth of popular interest in herbal medicine, the drug manufacturers see a big opportunity in developing and producing formulations most of them prescribed in the Indian systems of medicine, which is largely herbal based.

"India is going to play a major role for the curative drugs which is not available in any kind of the major applications of allopathic drugs in the crucial disease and the.... when the herbals and the research are going on some of the best herbal medicines available to cure the disease which is very much not going to be cured in the allopathic medicines and that is going to be taken by the Ayurvedas," said Deepak Padia, Managing Director, Osho Pharma Pvt. Ltd.

The Indian pharmaceutical industry manufactures bulk drugs belonging to several major therapeutic groups requiring various manufacturing processes. It has developed excellent facilities for production of all dosage forms like tablets, capsules, liquids, orals and injectables.

"We are also exporting to several countries so therefore we get to meet the health administrators from various countries. At the moment our plant at Dehradun is inspected in Columbia and last month it was audited by the Ivory Coast. Gujarat has a large pool of professionals who are second best to none that''''s their rating, That''''s what they tell us that having travelled across the world they see that the kind of personnel that Gujarat has in the pharmaceutical knowledge domain is simply at par with the best in the world," said Ketan Patel, Managing Director, Troikaa Pharma Pvt. Ltd

A well developed chemicals and fertilizer industry has partly helped the pharma industry in Gujarat to stabilize. Other factors that have helped it grow include a non-aggressive cheap industrial labour and with the decline of the textile mills in Ahmedabad entrepreneurs diversifying into pharma products.

There are at least 10,000 units manufacturing pharmaceuticals in India out of which approximately 300 units are categorized in organized sector.

Globally, Indian Pharmacy market holds 4th position in terms of volume and 13th in terms of value. The annual turnover of the Indian Pharmaceutical market is worth 226 billions rupees with a growth of 5.2 per cent. With the export of 141 billions rupees worth pharmaceutical products in the current fiscal year, the generic brands have increased over 60,000 in 60 therapeutic categories. (ANI)