The Russian pharmaceutical industry is not well, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said. He said that half the state budget allocated to medicine should be spent on domestically produced drugs.
Putin said that the state spends about 230 billion roubles a year on the purchase of medicines (this figure includes other centralized purchases, which he did not specify). However, currently domestic medicines account for only 10% of everything purchased under those federal programmes. The prime minister summed it up as follows, at a meeting on the development of the pharmaceutical industry: "In effect, the Russian producer is a guest on his own market." Putin's prescription ran as follows: this share should increase to 50% of the total value of the market over the next two or three years. He recommended long-term contracts for drug supplies with domestic producers to meet federal and municipal needs, of corporate clinics and the Academy of Medical Sciences' medical centres.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Industry and Trade said it is possible to increase Russian-made medicines' market share (according to the ministry, state purchases in 2008 amounted to about 125 billion roubles). It follows from the paper prepared by Viktor Khristenko, the Minister of industry and trade, (and which Vedomosti has a copy of) that the state buys 363 medicines under International Nonproprietary Names (INN). Of these 189 are produced both in Russia and abroad, but tenders are usually won by foreign producers. Foreign-made drugs have three times the market share than their domestic counterparts. The document reads that 17 INNs are produced only in Russia and 158 only abroad. The ministry spokesman concluded that Russian-made medicines' market share can be increased even without changing the existing portfolio of pharmaceutical companies, by making the mechanisms for state medicine purchasing more transparent and ensuring Russian companies have preferential status.
Based on its reading of Khristenko's paper, Vedomosti believes that Putin's prescription can be carried out if the state stops buying foreign medicines which have Russian equivalents. Pharmexpert's market research director, David Melik-Guseinov, said that Russia could take over the production of chemical medicines (45 INNs) and at least half of all biological generics (7-8 INNs). If all that were to happen, then Russian medicines would have 53% of the value of the market. Only innovative licensed medicines would be imported. Guseinov included the following caveat: "Generics are not always interchangeable. It is not always possible to replace one type of insulin with another."
Dmitry Golub, general director of the Sotex pharmaceutical company said that the quality of produce and the portfolio of the Russian pharmaceutical companies makes this goal achievable. Vladimir Shipkov, head of the International Pharmaceutical Companies Association, believes that if the government wants to develop local production, it should pay more attention to global producers, some of which would like to build plants in Russia. "For the time being many of these companies are too unpredictable and not subject to state regulation," he complained.
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