Mumbai, April 8 (IANS) The Japanese ministry of health and labour welfare (MHLW) has granted marketing approval to Indian pharma major Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd’s generic drug prescribed for treatment of blood pressure and angina. The company said Tuesday that MHLW’s authorisation for Ranbaxy’s generic Amlodipine 2.5 mg and 5 mg tablets make the hypertensive medicine the first of its kind to be developed by a generic pharmaceutical company outside Japan.

According to Intercontinental Marketing Services (IMS), the world’s leading health services data provider, Amlopidine has a market size of $2 billion in Japan.

Since 2004, Ranbaxy had filed seven products in Japan and till date has managed to achieve approval for every filing, the company said. The firm had made forays into the Japanese market in 2002 through a strategic alliance with mid-sized research pharma company, Nippon Chemiphar Ltd (NC) of Japan.