Indonesia’s health minister is confident foreign pharmaceutical companies will comply with new rules requiring them to build local factories, saying they would not risk being locked out of the country’s $2 billion drug market.

“I don’t think they’d dare leave,” Siti Fadilah Supari said Thursday. “But if they do, it’s their loss.”

The decree, which was issued earlier this month, is designed to encourage the transfer of technology and to create jobs in the nation of 235 million. It says foreign drug makers will only be allowed to sell products if they build local production facilities.

Critics say the rules could prevent some lifesaving medicine from being sold here.

But Supari said she was not worried, noting local and international drug companies that already have factories in Indonesia can import some medicine with “special access” licenses, ensuring that all domestic needs are met.

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