Generic drugs keep pharma industry healthy

MANILA, Philippines - The country’s pharmaceutical industry is poised for growth and generic pharmaceutical products are expected to continue chipping away the share of originator drugs in the local market in the coming years.

With the Philippine pharmaceutical industry seen growing five percent annually over the next three years, the Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Association of the Philippines (PHAP) said generics are expected to further eat up market share and contribute the lion’s share of the growth.

“We can only see the penetration of generic products to continually increase in the Philippines. Again, that is because we have a climate that is very receptive to generics. If you take a look at drugstores for instance, we have a proliferation of generic drugstores. The government as it invests in universal healthcare is also very encouraging because it buys a lot of generics,”  PHAP president Francis Del Val said in an interview yesterday.

A study commissioned by PHAP and conducted by Singapore-based IMS Consulting Group showed that generics accounted for 65 percent of the market in 2014 while originator products accounted for only 35 percent.

The study revealed that the generics market in the Philippines has been growing by six percent annually since 2010.

Likewise, it found generic prescribing by physicians increased by seven percent in 2014 from 2011.

“The Philippines has a higher utilization rate of lower-cost generics than other Asia-Pacific countries with comparable GDPs. The availability of both originator and generic pharmaceutical products allows patients and physicians to choose medicines based on their own preference and needs,” the report said.

Overall, the PHAP-IMS study sees the country’s pharmaceutical sector growing to become a P164-billion industry by 2018 from P146 billion in 2014.

As of last year, the industry employed 60,000 people, and manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers within the industry had contributed some P119 billion in taxes from 2006 to 2012.