Oxfam India CEO, Nisha Agrawal, said: “The Indian Government – until now – has repeatedly rejected the EU demands to introduce any of the additional intellectual property rules under the free trade agreement. Currently, over 80 per cent of all HIV and AIDS medicines are manufactured by generic companies in India, but if new trade rules are agreed the price of life-saving treatment would increase drastically.* India plays a critical role in the global medicines market, producing over two-thirds of all generic medicines affordable versions of drugs licensed by multinational companies, which are largely sold to poor and middle income countries. “At a time of austerity and declining aid budgets, especially for health, efforts to increase medicine prices for the world’s poor would be a double blow and have a devastating impact on the achievement of health-related Millennium Development Goals.” “The summit on Friday will be closely watched to see whether the EU and India will negotiate a trade agreement which puts people’s lives before the commercial interests of multinational drug companies.

Oxfam policy advisor, Rohit Malpani, said. The EU, backed by multinational pharmaceutical companies, are trying to impose new intellectual property and investment (IP) rules in India, which would result in drastically higher medicine prices for the poorest people across the globe.

The negotiations, which have been on-going for four years, are a means for the two economies to agree on a trade pact and forge a new commercial relationship. On the eve of a high-level summit between the leaders of India and the European Union in Delhi, Oxfam is calling on the EU not to pressure India into agreeing new trade rules that could deny hundreds of millions of people access to affordable medicines.

Rules of survival shut down