A Quick Look at Pharmaceutical Performance in Turkey, in 2010

According to data from reliable pharmaceutical sources, Turkish Pharmaceutical Sector has lived through another very challenging year. Although the market has incurred some expansion in terms of quantities, this has not reflected in terms of TL. This was certainly due to reductions imposed by the authority through new decrees.

The Turkish government has taken steps to implement many reforms under the name of 2003-2013 health transformation program, recently.

Within this scope, the government has also implemented a new system called “reference price policy” for drugs, to decrease drug spendings and stick to its budgets for 2009 and 2010. Based on said policy, the price of any drug to be sold in the Turkish market should not exceed the price of the cheapest products in EU countries. Consequently companies were obliged to make a total discount of 32,5% by the SGK (Turkish Social Security Authority)

All these factors caused a 25% decrease in pharmaceuticals revenues. Companies had difficulties in keeping their brands in the market due to low prices – another mandatory discount is expected to be imposed by SGK in June, 2011.

However, although drugs revenues decreased due to imposed practices by the government, health care services spending increased by 25%, in 2010.

Some companies have nevertheless shown progress and achieved reasonably successful results, as follows;

Currently, first 20 companies have the 67% of the total market sales in TL.
ABDI IBRAHIM ranks 1st in the sector with sales corresponding to 8% of the total market volume.

On the other hand ALI RAIF Company has shown the biggest growth in 2010 with a remarkable figure of 17% as compared to the previous term.

Since February 2010, a number of 34 new companies have entered the market with a total sales volume of 21,5 million TL between March 2010-February 2011.

Also ABDI IBRAHIM, the leading company has launched 8 new products between March 2010 and February 2011. This has certainly provided them with another competitive edge over their competitors as confirmed by the positive results achieved.

SECTOR MEDIA