In 2023, India became the largest supplier of foreign pharmaceuticals to the Russian market, ahead of Germany, which has led the ranking for the last two years. writes about this RBC with reference to data from analytical company RNC Pharma.
According to data, 293.9 million packs of Indian medicines were imported to Russia last year; This means a 3% increase compared to the previous year.
Analysts note that European pharmaceutical companies are reducing imports of original drugs to Russia due to the emergence of generic analogues and limited market presence.
“Some foreign companies are releasing drugs with many analogues that are in great demand due to low prices,” explains RNC Pharma development director Nikolay Bespalov.
So, at the beginning of the year, the American Viatris stopped the supply of Viagra, a well-known drug for the treatment of erectile dysfunction, to the Russian Federation due to competition with a large number of generic drugs. And Japan’s Astellas withdrew the antibiotic Vilprafen, which has no analogues in Russia, from the market, citing the optimization of investments on a global scale.
“Following the start of the SVO, a number of Western pharmaceutical companies made political decisions to limit the supply of certain medicines to Russia,” Bespalov adds.
In particular, we are talking about stopping the import of Cialis (Eli Lilly), Botox and fillers (AbbVie).
In total, 1.8 billion packs of foreign medicines were launched on the Russian pharmaceutical market in 2023 – 1.5% more than a year ago, but less than in the record year 2021 (1.9 billion). It also consisted of 4.1 billion packages of domestic medicine.
“Following the start of the Russian special operation, many Western pharmaceutical manufacturers announced that they were stopping their marketing investments and clinical trials in the Russian Federation, and some, such as BMS, Eli Lilly and Orion Pharma, withdrew from the market altogether and handed over the work to partners. ” the publication writes.
There was before that named Medicines that have left the Russian market and have no analogues.
Earlier it was becoming more expensive in Russia to produce medicines.