Importing Medicines from India

[IrfanMemon]

Dont want to offend anyone but would like to know why Thai Govt doesnt import medicines from India.

The cost of medicines are too high here & they can choose good brands & their medicines to be imported from India.

Just for an example - Antibiotic 10 tablets cost 400 Thai Baht here & same in India is hardly INR 200

[steve187]

one of my medications from the local pharmacy are made in india, i haven't found them in pattaya only the main branded ones at silly price.

[IrfanMemon]

one of my medications from the local pharmacy are made in india, i haven't found them in pattaya only the main branded ones at silly price.

Yes, i wanted to make the same point here..importing medicines from India will ultimately benefit Thai people. shitty price probably/surely make them crazy too

[steve187]

a lot of generic brands are made here, but for some reason mine was stopped

[IrfanMemon]

i agree...but did you compare the price with Indian medicines. its insane

[Sheryl]

They do not import from India because they want to support/protect the local pharmaceutical manufacturing sector, which is fairly large.

Same reason they put heavy tariffs on imported meds.

It would of course make more sense to place tariffs only on imports of drugs which are made here locally, but that would require complexity and frequent changes in the tariff schedules.

[IrfanMemon]

They do not import from India because they want to support/protect the local pharmaceutical manufacturing sector, which is fairly large.

Same reason they put heavy tariffs on imported meds.

It would of course make more sense to place tariffs only on imports of drugs which are made here locally, but that would require complexity and frequent changes in the tariff schedules.

Agreed that they want to support/protect the local pharmaceutical manufacturing sector.

We all can see lots of medicines are being imported from Japan/other coutries which has unfair price.

Why cant they import same meds from India then?

[Sheryl]

The import process for drugs that are approved for use in Thailand is not initiated by the Thai FDA.

The drug manufacturer or distributor initiates it by seeking product registration.

Quite likely that this is seldom done by Indian manufacturers and also that there are not many Thai distributors serving Indian drug manufacturers. Probably too low a profit margin given the red tape and hassle, especially since the Indian manufacturers have such a huge home market.

[Maestro]

The Thai government has its own factories, operated by the Government Pharmaceutical Organisation (GPO), for the production of a wide range of generic products.

[NamKAheng]

Some of the medicine from India are not up to par, the US FDA Have a report on that and in Canada also. It's not a very big problem if you take ibuprofen, but if it's things like blood pressure medicine or something like that you got a problem. When buying medicine around the world, there a good chance you ingest medicine with Indian content since they are a big producer of basic chemical to make them at a very cheap price.

[meatboy]

a lot of generic brands are made here, but for some reason mine was stopped

what were they steve i take 8 different ones daily all generic,in fact all generics produced in thailand are cheap.

[ravip]

Some of the medicine from India are not up to par

This is very true. There are heaps of medicines made in India of various qualities.

I wonder how one could choose the good among the bad.

Price wise it is cheap - quality???

[IrfanMemon]

its not tough to understand quality of meds if you are aware/pro.