The three-day 10th Pak Pharma and Healthcare Expo has concluded here on Thursday and during the event approximately business deals worth Rs200 million were struck between pharmaceutical companies, including international companies.

"Over 11,000 visitors comprising pharma industry people, traders, pharmacists, dealers, government officials and local academia visited the trade expo to secure business deals, get knowledge of products and participate in different sessions of International Conference on Pharma, Food and Healthcare," said event organizer Kamran Abbasi.

According to him, as many 70 local and foreign companies from Japan, Turkey, Malaysia, Taiwan and South Korea participated in the exhibition and interacted with each other and their local suppliers and distributors. The international conference participated by 350 people from different walks of life. At least 30 speakers from the health ministry, the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) and pharma sector addressed the participants including students.

Exhibitors of the trade show said that they had got opportunity to introduce their new products and latest technology to the industry people.

"The pharma industry in Pakistan is receiving good news from DRAP as far as manufacturing of quality products and their exports are concerned. The government wants to promote pharmaceutical exports through its policies," said Liaqat Jawaid, who is chairman of Morgan Technologies.

He further said that a couple of companies were leading on exports front while others would follow the path, adding the ongoing exhibition would help improve coordination among all stakeholders.

Abdul Rasheed Sonija from Surge Laboratories said that they received good response from their existing clients and new business customers during the expo, adding the company received new inquiries, got new innovative techniques and interacted with existing clients for business promotion.

"We have got encouraging response from pharma organizations and held several B2B meetings to discuss commercial deals during the exhibition," said Owais Bin Masood of Mak-Kemikal.

He said that they also had received students from different universities and employees of pharma companies to learn from each others' experiences. "Such platforms provide an opportunity to interact with international suppliers for export promotion and his company held business meetings with foreign companies to discuss joint ventures," he added.

Exhibitors and visitors of the expo pharma appreciated the Expo Centre management for providing state-of-the-art services and secured environment. They said that the facilities and services at the expo centre were of international standards.