Thailand is ordering 2 million doses of generic Plavix from India after failing to win large enough discounts for the blood-thinner made by Bristol-Myers Squibb and Sanofi-Aventis, Bloomberg News reports. As many as four Indian drugmakers are vying for the contract, Vichai Chokevivat, chairman of the Government Pharmaceutical Organization, told reporters in Bangkok today. The supplies will help meet Thailand’s demand for up to 5 million Plavix tablets a year.

The state-run drugmaker, which had initially sought 500,000 doses of generic Plavix expects to pay between 5 baht (or 16 US cents) and 5.50 baht for the pills, Vichai says. Sanofi offered to sell Plavix at 27 baht per tablet, with an added incentive of supplying 3.4 million tablets for the same cost as 1 million, Thailand’s FDA Director-General Siriwat Thiptharadol said last month.

“We proposed a program that would allow the Ministry of Public Health to supply, at no additional cost, our high-quality heart treatment,” Sanofi spokesman Jean-Marc Podvin told the news service. “However, the ministry has focused only on price and has insisted repeatedly on sourcing generics of Plavix of unknown quality.” He adds that Sanofi made the proposal in March and hasn’t received a formal answer.

Thailand is using a World Trade Organization provision that allows governments to permit generic-drug production without the patent owners’ consent in some cases. Bangkok is already buying copies of the AIDS drug efavirenz, marketed as Stocrin by Merck and as Sustiva by Bristol-Myers, from an Indian unit of Mylan Labs. Thailand says copying the drugs will allow the government to provide free medicine to a larger share of the country’s poorest citizens, including its 220,000 HIV sufferers.

PhRMA says issuing compulsory licenses removes the incentive for companies to invest in research, and that its members would retaliate by not introducing new drugs in Thailand.

The Thai government is “in the process” of also ordering Matrix’s copies of AIDS drugs Kaletra and its updated version Aluvia, both of which are made by Abbott Labs, Public Health Minister Mongkol Na Songkhla said last month. Two committees are examining whether to issue compulsory licenses on cancer medicines to treat poor Thai patients suffering from breast and blood cancer, although he declined to name any drugs under consideration.

The discounted meds will only be provided to patients who can’t afford the patented drugs, Mongkol said, and that Thailand could import more generic copies of drugs should drugmakers carry out their threats to withhold new meds.