[NinaGucci]

Creating a pharmaceutical industry business is very complicated indeed, and i have always wondered how companies like SAIDAL could open manufacturing facilities in Algeria in such a messy environment!

The most basic thing is to have a governemental agency which regulates not just products/patent registrations but also all the aspects of manufacturing/validations/environmental and economical matters concerning both the company and the products. Equivalent to these agencies are the EMEA in Europe, FDA in North America, Health Canada...etc.

Money is not always the only required thing when starting a pharmaceutical industry, something that Algerian business men did not think of before.

This industry is also very technologically driven, and therefore, a full collaboration with the different R&D laboratories all over the world is necessary, but most of all, getting the right people to the crew is much more important. However, seeing the large immigration and the lack of interest by Algerian scientists and engineers residing abroad in coming back to the country and contribute to this industry, it is quite difficult to see where both the company and the government are going to get the experts who would properly advise them. Having advice from GSK or any other giant pharmaceutical company is not always a great idea as their main aim is to kill the competition by making tremendous offerings to start up companies in exchange for their research and facilities.

Anyways, my suggested solutions could be:

* getting a bit of interest from the Algerian parlimant into this industry: we should have national debates and create a national strategy. i guess this has already been done, but by who? is it the right people? is it the experts who worked in Research & Development or pharmaceutical manufacturing (which could not have been in Algeria as we still do not have proper facilities), and what are the budgets required? (is it 0% from the Oil money?! or is a relatively high percentage as what we spend on our military facilities?!), what are the time lines? (is it in 200 years? or those imaginary dates, or is it by whenever we re supposed to join the World Trade Organisation (OMC)?

* getting an interest from both Algerian venture capitalists who are ready to be involved in a highly risky but yet highly profitable business, and also getting the industry experts, scientists, engineers who will be directors of operations/research an production, and i mean those who will design processes from scratche and not copy or get instructions from giant pharmas (as you can always have licence to produce any pharmaceutical, just as SAIDAL is doing with Insuline, but none of the very few algerian companies or laboratories are producing their own blockbuster drugs!)

* do not focus on only one market or one technology expert, i.e. Africa is not the only market and France's laboratories are not the only experts! from my experience, nobody invests in Africa although the market is large, quantity wise, unfortunately, the reality is that it is not very profitable. if we want to give charity to Lybia or the occidental Sahara, we will do it, no problem! however, it is not the best time yet! we need to get the money first, when our pharma industry will start having billions as annual profits, then we can expand the market to our neighbours, however, for now, the most profitable markets are Europe, North America and Japan.

also, as far as i know, industry wise, the UK and the US are still the leaders, so i suggest those should be our technology advisors (with limitations of course)

that s all what i can think of so far, but please, do reply to this subject, im really interested by having your opinions