Pharmaceutical exports up to over JD600 million in two years

AMMAN — Jordanians spend 37.6 per cent of their income on food and 6.8 per cent on health (36 per cent of which on medicine), Jordan Food and Drug Administration (JFDA) Director General Hayel Obeidat said on Wednesday.

In an interview with the Jordan News Agency, Petra, Obeidat said that the access of Jordanian medicines to 62 countries worldwide is a "big success" for the local industry, noting that the value of pharmaceutical exports went up to more than JD600 million in the past two years.

He said that the Kingdom got rid of the counterfeit medicine market in 2014, attributing this achievement to the increasing awareness on genuine medicines.

So far, the prices of 262 medicines have been lowered in 2018, including 139 whose prices may be lowered again before the end of the year, Obeidat said, noting that 2017 witnessed lowered prices for 955 medicines.

Meanwhile, the number of food violations has dropped remarkably and was accompanied by lesser destroyed quantities of expired food, he stated, attributing these developments to harsher penalties and the application of gradual penalties to violators.

The director general said the Kingdom's food exports in 2017 amounted to $4.3 billion, with a violation rate to health standards of 0.38 per cent.

He noted that there are some 1,800 factories for foodstuff and some 82,000 facilities that deal with food in its various stages of production, manufacturing, distribution and sale in the Kingdom, which makes monitoring this big number of food institutions an "uneasy mission" for JFDA.

The administration implemented 13,986 inspection visits in the first third of this year, which resulted in the closing of 598 food institutions, 183 case referrals to courts and 7,204 fining of institutions in various sectors.

During the January-April period, JFDA destroyed 569 tonnes of foodstuff, while the number of violating institutions stood at 781, Obeidat noted. 

On the administration efforts in Ramadan, he said that JFDA personnel implemented 3,892 inspection campaigns across the Kingdom, during which they issued 48 fines, destroyed 12,934 litres of foodstuff and 48,011 kilogrammes of food items, in addition to closing six food institutions and suspending 60 others.