“The trend of the drug market in 2015 will highly depend on the total budget earmarked for healthcare and particularly on the percentage allocated to medicines. Should this not go up, we will not be speaking of a value increase of the market of prescription drugs, but possibly about a rising number of treated patients,” said Dan Zamonea, general manager of Roche Romania.
The pharmaceutical market is worth almost 12 billion lei (EUR2.7 billion), and in the first half of 2014 it had advanced by 2%, and the latest estimates indicate a slight rebound for the entire year, after stagnation in 2013.
The industry’s weak performance comes amid the lower sums earmarked by the state for drugs and the clawback tax.
“Romania has the highest value of the clawback tax in Europe, as a percentage in companies’ sales. This has had an impact over the pharmaceutical industry as a whole, but the effects differed with the specific of each company’s products,” said Dan Zamonea.
Zamonea, 54, is one of the industry’s veterans, being recruited by the Swiss company in 2001. He brought Roche onto the leading position among Romania’s largest pharmaceutical companies. Roche generated sales of almost RON820 million in the July 2013-June 2014 period.
(English version by Catalina Apostoiu)