WTO considering new rules of origin

The World Trade Organisation's general council has been asked to approve global trading laws stating that 'the production of tablets, capsules, granules, or other administrable forms of medicaments, such as in diffusion, dissolution, osmotic and other systems', should result in a legally defined new product being created. This would be considered to have been made in the country of manufacture, rather than where the raw pharmaceutical ingredient was made.

According to a memorandum from a special WTO rules of origin committee: 'These are highly complex operations performed under controlled conditions which result in new products which have been substantially transformed.'

The committee is trying to harmonise rules of origin internationally; at present all such regulations are national, making trading difficult. The committee chairman also recommended a line adding that where manufacturing involved the 'mere pressing of tablets or by mere encapsulation,' a new product would not be considered to have been created.