The Centre on Friday announced that all exports of pharmaceuticals and drugs would be made under a trace and track surveillance system from July 1. This would be done at primary, secondary and tertiary levels of packaging labels following GS-1 global standards.
According to an official statement issued here, the Director General of Foreign Trade has already issued a notification in this regard earlier this month for putting in place this mechanism by July.
It may be recalled that last year some consignments of pharmaceuticals and drugs exported to Africa from China were seized by African regulatory authorities on the grounds of their being sub-standard or spurious. These consignments though had originated in China had labels of ‘Made in India' pasted on them.
This had created some adverse publicity for Indian generic pharmaceuticals and India had to specifically take this up with the African drug regulatory authorities and the Chinese government.
