Taiwan is mapping out a four-year national pharmaceutical resilience preparedness program that aims to bolster the country’s domestic drug supply with a 24 billion new Taiwan dollar ($755 million) investment.
The new framework comes in response to “drastic geopolitical changes” that have impacted global medicine supply chains, the country's president, Lai Ching-te, said at a March 5 meeting of the Healthy Taiwan Promotion Committee. Taiwan in particular is “heavily reliant” on pharmaceutical imports, with some items “even subject to foreign hostile forces,” he noted. The country’s pharmaceutical supply chains can also be threatened by “transportation, industry strategy, and market scale” considerations of major drugmakers, the president added.
To strengthen Taiwan’s line of defense against such threats, the government is banking on a three-fold plan that focuses on domestic pharmaceutical production for domestic use, “smart allocation,” and international partnerships.
Specifically, the country will focus on producing at least 50 key pharmaceuticals in Taiwan, using policy subsidies, market guidance and National Health Insurance reimbursement incentives to boost production of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and promote general self-reliance in the biopharma realm, Ching-te said. A “national team” will be set up to ensure the resilience of key pharmaceutical supplies, a move that will also help foster emergency preparedness, he added.
The government will come up with a list of critical drugs and essential medicines to focus on including insulin, antibiotics, glucose infusions, oncology meds and immunomodulators, Deputy Health Minister Lin Ching-yi said at the meeting, according to a local report. Ching-yi further explained that the national team will help Taiwan’s 31 domestic API makers and 143 drugmakers raise the share of locally-made products.
Taiwan is also forming a national-level Pharmaceutical Intelligent Logistics and Storage Center, a smart technology-based monitoring system that can flag early supply warnings. The last arm of the plan is focused on building up “industrial momentum” and ultimately driving the country's economy.
“This is not just a plan to safeguard health and ensure national security, but also an opportunity to promote the upgrading of the biomedical industry,” the president explained. “We want to make Taiwan an indispensable partner in global supply chains for biomedical products and medical devices, transforming the enhancement of pharmaceutical resilience into industrial momentum leading to a Healthy Taiwan.”
Healthy Taiwan is the country’s health policy platform, established in 2024 through the creation of the Healthy Taiwan Promotion Committee. Key to realizing the Healthy Taiwan vision and building national resilience, Ching-te said, are coordinated efforts by the government and private sector.
More manufacturing capacity is already coming to Taiwan. Earlier this week, California-based CRDMO BioDuro linked up with Taiwanese API maker Centra API Solutions to fold Centra’s commercial-scale facility in Taipei, Taiwan, into BioDuro’s production network. The move is part of a new joint venture that strengthens “both companies’ global supply chain resilience,” BioDuro CEO Armin Spura, Ph.D., said in a statement at the time.