US-based pharma giant Merck & Co. Friday announced it was re-starting its India operations through its fully-owned subsidiary Merck Sharp and Dhome (MSD) Pharmaceuticals with a five-year $15 million outlay.

"The passing of the Patents Act has given the pharma industry a boost that has also driven our plans to invest in this market. We have a long-term commitment to be in India and will do whatever it takes to be successful here," MSD India's managing director Leonard Tauro told the media at a press conference here.

Merck had closed shop in India almost 25 years ago. According to Tauro the company had to close down its Indian operations in the early 1980s because the prevailing regulatory environment was not conducive to business.

The company will begin its operations by launching two of its products Aggrastat - a platelet aggregation inhibitor used to treat cardiac complications - and Zienam - a broad-spectrum antibiotic used for treating serious infections - in August this year.

MSD India's medical director Naveen Rao said the company had established a clinical research division for conducting registration studies for four of its products to be launched in 2006.

The four drugs are: Invanz (an antibiotic used to treat gram positive and negative bacteria), Cancidas (anti-fungal drug), Pneumovax (pneumonia vaccine) and Varivax (chicken pox vaccine), Rao said.

While MSD India has no immediate plans of production here, company officials did not rule out the possibilities in the future.

"We don't have any immediate plans of manufacturing here but we will evaluate the situation later and if the market is conducive for manufacturing out of here we might take that option," Tauro said.

The company is in the process of putting a distribution network in place and will market its products through distributors and channels, its business director Murali Parthasarathy said.

There are also plans for a dedicated research and development centre but company officials were not sure of the time frame for such an institution to be in place. The company spent $3.5 billion on research globally in 2004.

"We want to do research in India and expect to put a research and development set-up here that would be the best," Rao said.

MSD India is headquartered in New Delhi and plans to set up centres in Mumbai and Chennai soon to take care of its India operations.