The National Pharmaceutical Industry Grows 32.35 Percent To The First Quarter Of 2024

Director of Chemical Downstream and Pharmacy Industry of the Ministry of Industry Emmy Suryandari (Photo: Theresia Agatha/VOI)

JAKARTA - The Ministry of Industry (Kemenperin) noted that the growth of the national pharmaceutical industry experienced a surge in the first quarter of 2024. This is reflected in the growth of the chemical, downstream and pharmaceutical industry sector which reached 32.35 percent until March this year.

This was conveyed by the Director of Chemical Downstream and Pharmacy Industry of the Ministry of Industry Emmy Suryandari on the National Seminar agenda entitled 'Resilience and Sustainability of the Acceleration of Independence of Drug and Vaccine Raw Materials at the Grand Sahid Hotel, Jakarta, Tuesday, September 10.

"The performance of the national pharmaceutical industry is quite encouraging. So, the growth of the chemical, downstream and pharmaceutical industries from the first quarter of 2023 to the first quarter of 2024 is the growth of year on year, it's already 32.35 percent," said Emmy.

Emmy said the COVID-19 pandemic had a major impact on the national pharmaceutical industry. This can be seen from the increase in growth of 21.77 percent in 2020.

Based on exposure data, the growth of the chemical, downstream and pharmaceutical industry sectors reached 9.03 percent in 2019, then in 2020 it was 21.77 percent.

Next, in 2021, which fell to 10.95 percent. Then in 2022 it fell again to 0.43 percent. Then, experienced a significant increase in the first quarter of 2023, which was 32.35 percent.

"The growth value of the pharmaceutical industry will stabilize in 2022 and 2023 in line with the end of the COVID-19 pandemic," he said.

According to Emmy, this performance is quite good. However, he said, this must be accompanied by the growth of the medicinal raw material (BBO) industry in the country.

This is because the dependence of national BBO imports has reached around 90 percent to date.

"This is a good number if we talk about the pharmaceutical industry, but if we dig deeper, this increase is also the same or consistent with the growth of the BBO industry in Indonesia. This is what we need to examine together, because when we talk about the pharmaceutical industry, yes. But, where did the raw materials come from first, here," he said.

He hopes that in the future the growth of the national pharmaceutical industry can be in line with the growth of the local BBO industry. Thus, said Emmy, the national import dependence rate of BBO could be reduced.

"We hope that, of course, the portion of 32.35 percent should also be enjoyed by the local BBO industry. Why? Because it means that we have all walked together, upstream and downstream grew together. So, we at the Ministry of Industry always have principles for how upstream and downstream develop together," he said.