Biological products are one of the focuses of the independence of pharmaceutical preparations targeted by the Ministry of Health. This is because the development of medicine has now turned to biotechnology products, the need for biological products in health services is quite large, plus the price of these products is also quite high. During 2022, the Directorate General of Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices through the Directorate of Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Resilience has made efforts to be able to facilitate the development of domestic biological products, including through a series of FGDs, monev/monitoring to industry and research institutions, inventory of test and research labs, and so on.

In addition, the needs required to support increased production of biological products from development to finished products have been inventoried. From the results of the inventory, a policy is needed to be able to overcome the obstacles faced by the pharmaceutical industry in developing biological products.

In order to follow up and synergize steps in making policies related to biological products, an activity was held to evaluate the achievements of Biotechnology Production Acceleration with participants consisting of the pharmaceutical industry that has and will develop biological products, participants from the Ministry of Health (BKPK and KGTK), GP Pharmacy and related Ministries / Institutions at the Sahid Hotel on December 9.

In his report, the Head of the Working Team for Development and Facilitation of Downstreaming of Raw Materials and Preparations of Phytopharmacia and Domestic Biological Products Refiandes said, “This activity aims to discuss the draft policy recommendations related to biological products that have been prepared; knowing the potential for cooperation and foreign markets through health diplomacy; knowing policies related to tax facilities in supporting the development of domestic biological products and knowing the regulations for TKDN certification in domestic biological products”.

Director of Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Resilience, Roy Himawan had the opportunity to give direction and officially open this activity. He said, “The need for policy recommendations involving related Ministries / Institutions, this is because these policies are not only in terms of regulations in the health sector, but synergism is needed from various cross-sectors such as the Ministry of Industry related to TKDN, the Ministry of Finance related to tax incentives, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs related to cooperation opportunities by knowing the strategic steps that can be pursued in order to open up the potential for cooperation”.

TKDN is one of the efforts on how to nationalize the industry so that we can be independent from the beginning. Tax facilities that have been provided to support development and research include tax holidays, tax allowances, super deduction tax RnD and special economic zones. The government also facilitates opening export markets in terms of business matching, exhibitions and attracting investors and principals for technology transfer.

The policy recommendations proposed at the meeting were to determine priority biological products to be developed and produced. The biological industry players felt greatly helped by this forum where information was obtained and discussed related to tax incentives, TKDN regulations and foreign diplomacy in order to open the biological product market so that the economy scale could increase.