No Medicine Shortages Anticipated, India Has 3 Months Inventory: AIOCD

The disruption of supply chain and manufacturing operations due to COVID-19 lockdown is unlikely to lead to medicine shortages, as India has a comfortable inventory of three months at various levels of trade.

“Apart from overall 7 weeks inventory at the distributor level, there is 4-6 weeks inventory at pharma company depot and average 7-10 days inventory at retail leading to a cumulative medicine stock of 13 weeks,” said market research firm AIOCD-AWACS.

AIOCD keeps track of pharmaceutical stocks across thousands of stockists. The data is based on the April 7 stock level.

The average inventory levels of medicines at the stockists or the distributors have come down from 44 days in the year-ago period to 40 days in March 2020.

The Indian pharma industry has sales grew 9.8 percent to Rs 1.43 lakh crore in FY20.

The chronic and sub-chronic segment like anti-diabetes, cardiac and respiratory medicines saw a decline in inventory days at the distributor level. The three segments put together had sales of Rs 43,298‬ crore in FY20.

The stock of anti-diabetes segment at the distributor level has fallen to 27 days as of March 2020, from 35 days last year. Cardiac medicines too saw distributor inventory days falling by 8 days to 32 days from 40 days. The respiratory segment saw the biggest fall of 10 days to 33 days compared to 43 days last year.

Analysts attribute the inventory decline to people stocking-up on chronic medicines that need to be taken daily.

Anti-malarial medications saw inventory levels dropping steeply by 23 days to 52 days at the end of March 2020. The drop was attributed to hydroxychloroquine – an anti-malarial drug that’s been used as prophylactic or preventive medicine against COVID-19

The inventory levels of vitamins, minerals and nutrients saw no change at 44 days. In contrast – dermatology medicines saw inventory levels increasing by 8 days to 58 days and vaccine saw an increase of 14 days to 51 days.

AIOCD said as production and transport ramps up, the stock level can only go up and continue to stabilize, assuring the nation of no shortage of essential medicines.-Money Control