TEHRAN – Iran is planning to establish 16 pharmaceutical factories in foreign countries and is currently finalizing contracts, Faramarz Ekhteraei, the chairman of the Iranian Pharmaceutical Industries Syndicate has said.

However, the official did not provide further details on the target countries.

“Currently, more than 70 percent of the raw materials required by the country's pharmaceutical factories are domestically produced,” Mehr news agency quoted Ekhteraei as saying.

Highlighting the country’s capabilities and potential of pharmaceutical factories for exports, the official said that imposed sanctions have posed many obstacles making it difficult to export products.

Once such factories are constructed, the true potential of the country's pharmaceutical industry, which is a step above manufacturing pharmaceutical products, will be demonstrated.

Medicine exports to increase

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is developing a plan to increase pharmaceutical exports by 30 percent in the mid-term, an official with the FDA has said.

“In the past years, medicine exports in Iran accounted for a small share of non-oil exports. However, over the past year, it experienced a growing trend,” IRNA quoted Seyyed Ali Maboudi as saying.

The official went on to point out that the exports of raw materials and pharmaceutical products over the past Iranian calendar year (March 2023-March 2024) were valued at more than 100 million dollars.
“The Food and Drug Administration is planning to double the medicine exports in the short term and tenfold in the long term,” the official added.

Given the impacts of drugs on the health of society in all countries, they are one of the most complicated types of goods to export as they require registration and quality approvals in each destination country, Maboudi stressed.

Knowledge-based companies manufacturing medications

Some 600 medical equipment companies are active in the country, producing around 99 percent of the medicine supplied to the domestic market. Medical equipment manufacturers in the country produce and supply over 10,000 types of medical equipment to domestic and foreign markets. Now, various pieces of laboratory equipment are manufactured at prices much lower than the same foreign products.

Iranian knowledge-based companies have succeeded in producing recombinant drugs which are mainly used for treating hard-to-treat diseases such as cancers, MS, hemophilia, and viral diseases.

MT/MG