The pharmaceutical market in Romania surged 22.5% to 2 Billion lei in Q1 2009 against the same period last year (2008), with increase in sales of prescription drugs.
The Romanian pharmaceutical market grew 22.5% in the first quarter of 2009 to 2 Billion lei (Romanian currency) (approx. US$ 65,841) against the same period a year ago, as reported by financiarul.ro.
Cegedim, a market research company, says in its report that the retail segment of the industry registered the highest growth in Q1 2009, 23% higher as compared to Q1 2008, reaching nearly 1.73 Billion lei (approx. US$ 56,953), followed by hospital segment that grew 19% to around 255 Million lei (approx. US$ 8,395). Besides, the sales of the cardiovascular medicines were the highest at roughly 19.8% of the total sales. Digestive medications and nervous system recorded share of 13.9% and 13.6% respectively in the overall sales.
The Romanian pharmaceutical market is witnessing a new trend of rising sales of prescription drugs while over-the-counter (OTC) drugs sales remained almost stagnant, reflecting the weak purchasing power of consumers due to financial crisis and the steep increase in costs of OTC drugs.
Drug stores have cut down their orders to the distributors and are selling drugs to patients from their inventories, waiting for lower prices, which were expected to have come in force from April 1, 2009. However, the market performance in terms of sales at drugstores was quite impressive, but there was some slowdown at the production and distribution levels.
According to industry experts, the market is expected to show a weak performance in the second quarter of 2009 on account of lower prices. Segmenting the four quarters of a year according to the legislative framework, Q4 is considered the best, Q3 is the weakest, while Q1 and Q2 remain different. However, the second quarter of the current year will slump in sales compared to Q1.
A Senior Research Analyst at RNCOS says, “The Romanian pharmaceutical sector is not as much advanced as the new members of the European Union. Health represents an extremely important sector in Romania, but the country still has a long way to go in terms of meeting the standards of the European Union, like the harmonization of legislation, exclusivity of clinical data, like during the procedure of booking of a drug, and the protection of patents.”
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