Russia Pharma Market Grew by 2.6%

The volume of the Russian pharmaceutical market in 2018 increased by 2.6% reaching 1.68 trillion rubles, follows from the annual report of DSM Group, cited by RIA Novosti. In real terms, drug sales increased by 1.5% and totalled 6.4 billion packs.

“The volume of the pharmaceutical market amounted to 1.682 trillion rubles, which is 2.6% higher than in 2017. The market growth dynamics slowed down in compare with 2016, before that the annual consumption of medicines increased by more than 14% a year. The main factors of decline were low inflation on drugs, the lack of indexation of prices for state-regulated drugs, as well as general economic factors,” - the report says.

Low growth rates of drug consumption, in particular, are due to a decrease in the purchasing power of the population and real income. The commercial segment of drugs made the main contribution to the growth of the market, the report specifies. In 2018, 5.3 billion drug packages were sold through pharmacies (an increase by 3.9%) for about 991 billion rubles in retail prices (an increase of 4.6%).

“The growth of the retail market in rubles is lower than in 2017. This was influenced, among other things, by the low incidence of influenza and respiratory diseases, which did not lead to an increase in demand for “seasonal” drugs,” - the document says.

In 2018, two trends prevailed on the market: a decline in the share of OTC drugs and a market growth due to two price segments – “up to 50 rubles” and “over 500 rubles”. According to the report, the share of imported drugs in Russia in 2018 reached 70.2% in monetary terms and 39.4% in packages.

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