The Polemic of Syrup Drugs Causes Kidney Failure, Pharmaceutical Industry Has a Market of IDR 88.3 Trillion But Still Depends on Imported Raw Materials

Illustration (Photo: Doc. Antara)

JAKARTA - The allegation of fever-reducing syrup that has recently been the cause of acute kidney failure has been in the spotlight. The reason is, most reports state that cases occur in the majority of children who take this type of drug.

In this regard, the pharmaceutical industry in Indonesia is actually one of the sectors that contributes quite a lot to the economy.

Data from the Ministry of Industry states that the Indonesian pharmaceutical market in 2019 was estimated to be no less than IDR 88.3 trillion. This figure is claimed to have grown by 2.9 percent compared to the 2018 period.

It is stated that there are approximately 200 pharmaceutical industries in Indonesia with a total sales value of IDR 80 trillion.

For the record, another fact is that 95 percent of raw materials for medicine (BBO) in Indonesia are still imported. The imports are from China as much as 70 percent, India 20 percent, and the rest is from the United States and the European Union.

"Imports occur because domestic BBO does not meet existing standards", said the Ministry of Industry in its minutes, quoted by the editorial staff on Monday, October 24.

Note, 73 percent of the national pharmaceutical market share is dominated by local pharmaceutical companies. This condition is encouraging because Indonesia is the only country in the ASEAN region where local companies dominate the market share.

Other countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand share the pharmaceutical market controlled by foreign companies or multinational companies.

Meanwhile, the ten largest pharmaceutical product exporters supply around 77 percent of the world's total demand.

Germany was ranked first with an export value of around US$89.6 billion in 2019. Followed by Switzerland and the United States with an export value of US$83 billion and US$53.6 billion, respectively.

Meanwhile, Asia's big players, namely India and China, are ranked 11th and 15th, respectively, with a contribution of 2.7 percent and 1.5 percent.

Indonesia alone controls less than 0.1 percent of the world market share or US$556 million. The Ministry of Industry revealed that there was a downward trend in exports of pharmaceutical products worldwide by 0.8 percent during 2016-2019. This condition caused Indonesia to only rank 44th in that period.