See huge opportunity in Venezuela; US supply not restricted: DRL

However, there are certain third-party verifications that are happening, he says.Below is the transcript of Saumen Chakraborty’s interview with CNBC-TV18\\'s Surabhi Upadhyay.Q: Let's start-off first with Venezuela and Russia. What was the total write-down that you have seen in Venezuela and how much is outstanding?A: So, Venezuela as we indicated earlier we have been calibrating ourselves there in Venezuela. So far as the opportunity in that market is concerned there is a huge opportunity. We simply was calibrating in terms of how much we get the repatriations of Bolivar converted to Dollar coming back to India. We took in, in principle kind of a decision that we will only send goods from India with the cost of good equivalent to the amount of repatriation that we get from Venezuela. So, since we have not been getting much and, during the quarter we got some but very insignificant amount, less than even USD 1 million. So, the dispatch has been hardly anything to Venezuela and whatever we have sent earlier and that is what one is selling out of that. So, what we started doing from Q4 of last year onwards is that whatever net monetary assets which we have in Venezuela that we were translating at SIMA Direct which is about 196 Bolivars to a Dollar and we took some hit in Q4 last year which was almost Rs 84 crore of hit and that continued. In different quarters we had different amount of write off and in this particular quarter, in Q3 that amount or net monetary asset vision is Rs 64 crore.Q: What is the update on the warning letter that has been issued to three of your plants?A: We have given the update on progress of our remediation in the last week of January. Roughly every 45 days we should be giving an update to USFDA in terms of progress on remediation.Q: Q: Are you still supplying to the US from these plants? When do you expect this process of remediation to be completed and getting an actual clearance from FDA?A: We have been always supplying. I clarified even when we got warning letter that this warning letter is not with an import alert. Unless there is an import alert there is no restrictions on your part to supply.Of course as part of our warning letter response we have made certain commitments. There have been also third party verification which have been happening. So, all the remediation measures to some extent slowed down some dispatches from our API plants specifically for external customers. However in terms of supply to US, there has been no restrictions.