Australian Pharma sees opportunities in govt "Asian Century" report

The government’s Australia in the Asian Century report, released this week, highlights the opportunity provided by the Australian pharmaceutical industry for Australia to engage with the emerging markets in the Asian region, says trade group Medicines Australia’s chief executive Brendan Shaw.

“The Australian medicines industry is already helping to drive Australia’s engagement with the Asian region and there are further opportunities ahead,” Dr Shaw said, adding: “Medicines are among Australia’s largest manufacturing exports to Asia, and with Australia’s latent competitive strengths in this area, we have the potential to grow this significantly. We are already seeing companies like CSL, AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline supplying Asian markets from their operations in Australia and, if we get the policy settings right, we can build further on these opportunities. As well as supplying things like blood products, asthma medicines and flu medicines to Asia, the Australian industry is also supplying services like clinical trials and health economic analysis to the Asian economies.

Also welcomed by generics sector