India’s Department of Pharmaceuticals and Ministry of External Affairs will decide on overseas allocations of the drug, an official said. India’s trade regulator, the Directorate General of Foreign Trade had on March 25 restricted the exports of hydroxychloroquine.exports of over two dozen drug formulation and active pharmaceutical ingredients — the chemicals that make a finished drug work — in a notification issued on April 6. These were earlier put in the restricted list.
“This decision was an ideal example of how trade equations will develop in the post-Covid-19 world, where food and medicines will increasingly become part of national security concerns,” Chatterjee said Tuesday. “In this case, India seems to have enough hydroxychloroquine to export on humanitarian grounds. But we may not see such generosity among nations for many drugs and food items going ahead.”
India is expecting a doubling of the domestic demand for the drugs, the official said, without giving details of current production numbers. He said the government has been assessing the quantities that can be exported while ensuring internal demand is met.