Asian Producers Target Philippines Drug Market

The Philippines government is encouraging greater penetration of the local drug market by leading Asian pharmaceuticals-producing countries. The Philippines International Trading Corporation, the country's main public sector foreign procurement organisation, has recently been in discussions with Indian and Pakistani drug firms in order to increase supplies of low-cost generics.

One recent significant development has been a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Pharmexcil, India's drug export promotion agency, which could see a rise in generic drug imports from the country. Indian drug exports to the Philippines are already reported to be growing by 11% per year.

Perhaps in another sign of things to come, the PITC has also signed another MoU with a Pakistani group for PHP10mn (US$0.18mn) worth of low-cost drug raw materials and products including GlaxoSmithKline's Ventolin (albuterol) asthma treatment. GSK is the leading multinational on the Pakistani market.

Meanwhile, Chinese drugmakers also appear eager to pursue opportunities on the Philippines market. Officials report that Seeinglong, a Chinese firm described as ranked among the country's "top five" traditional medicines producers, is set to invest PHP550mn (US$10.08mn) on a new manufacturing facility in the Philippines. Notably, Seeinglong also has a US$100mn plant in Shanghai producing Western-style injectable pain drugs.

The multinational sector is likely to regard an increase in Philippines government procurement, and any increase in the officially-sanctioned parallel export trade, with extreme suspicion. Although such low-cost imports have reached only a fifth of the Philippines drug market, which is expected to be worth US$5.65bn at consumer prices by 2009, the country's Supreme Court recently overruled a multinational sector challenge to the poorly-regulated trade.