Revival of the Russian pharmaceutical industry: Ulita rides…
Tablets remain on paper
The construction of new Russian pharmaceutical industries is being transferred to the future
Galina Papernaya, "Moscow News", 13.12.2011
The first year of the implementation of the state program for the revival of the domestic pharmaceutical industry ends with very modest results. Only on one construction site did new buildings of the plant for the production of medicines really grow. Dozens of other widely advertised projects – with a total cost of more than 40 billion rubles – remain on paper.
At this rate, the authorities are unlikely to have time to achieve the declared goal in two five–year plans - to provide Russians with "home-made" medicines by 50%.But the Ministry of Industry and Trade – the agency in charge of the Federal Target Program "Development of the pharmaceutical and medical industry of the Russian Federation until 2020" – the indicators of the first year do not confuse. Officials continue to list investment promises of market participants. "Russian manufacturers will invest more than 15 billion rubles in reconstruction and construction in the coming years. The declared investments of foreign companies currently amount from 25 to 30 billion rubles. Novartis alone should invest $500 million over 5 years," Sergey Tsyb, head of the Department of Chemical and Technical Complex and Bioengineering Technologies of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, told MN.
According to him, 10 of the largest domestic manufacturers, including Akrikhin, Geropharm, Petrovax, confirmed their intention to start construction in Russia. At the level of approvals and construction to the "zero level" are multimillion-dollar projects Novo Nordisk, Berlin-Chemie, Astra Zeneca. All the already operating plants of foreign companies in Russia were put into operation in the past years – these are German Stada and Fresenius, French Sanofi-aventis and Servier, Hungarian Gedeon Richter, Slovenian KRKA, Polish Polpharm. The only plant that was really completed in 2011 to the stage of finishing works is the Norwegian Nycomed plant in Yaroslavl.
"Out of the declared billions in 2010-2011, a little more than 700 million rubles were actually invested," Sergey Shulyak, CEO of the DSM Group marketing agency, translated the plans into real figures in an interview with a correspondent of MN. And it's mostly foreign money. "If we talk about Russian manufacturers, none of them are definitely building anything new now, at best they are reconstructing," the general director of the Association of Russian Pharmaceutical Manufacturers (ARFP) told MN Victor Dmitriev.
Foreign companies are in no hurry to invest in real estate, preferring less costly and easily curtailed projects – support for the training of young specialists in the field of pharmacology and biochemistry, as well as research projects for the development of innovative medicines.
Experts note that the state, inviting Western companies to assimilate into the Russian market, does everything not to recognize them as domestic producers. "Even in relation to those foreign companies that have their own production facilities in Russia and are Russian legal entities, the protectionist measures promised to domestic companies are not applied," the executive director of the Association of International Pharmaceutical Manufacturers (AIPM) told MN Vladimir Shipkov. – For example, the prices of products from the list of vital for traditionally local companies were indexed due to inflation, but not for the products of our association members." According to Shipkov, it is already quite difficult for regional managers of a large firm to convince headquarters to make at least some investments in the Russian market. After all, such giants as Pfizer or Roche sell no more than 1-1.5% of their total production here.
Another deterrent factor is that the transition of enterprises in Russia to the international manufacturing quality standard GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice), announced after several postponements to 2014, will be carried out in a "truncated" version. Which will allow many outdated factories to continue dumping. "The developers of the Russian national GMP standards are well aware that they are inventing a bicycle that has long been invented in the West. They don't even invent, they just take a ready-made one and remove some details whose purpose they don't understand. At the same time, they do not try to assess the consequences of their actions," Alexander Fedotov, technologist and president of the interregional public organization Association of Micro–Pollution Control Engineers (ASINKOM), described the domestic production rules proposed by the Ministry of Industry and Trade to MN.
And finally, the Russian state itself is in no hurry to invest in the modernization of the pharmaceutical industry, although the Federal Target Program refers to co-financing projects from the treasury in the amount of 50 to 75% of their cost. According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, agreements were signed this year for budget financing in the amount of 3 billion rubles.
All these risks force Western companies to look for their own, non-state ways to increase their presence in the market. "It is a widespread practice when a Western company enters into a contract with one of several GMP–compliant Russian sites," Yuri Krestinsky, director of the Institute for Public Health Development, told MN about the actual practice of localization of production. "They can only put instructions in boxes or pack tablets in blisters, but they can also perform more complex manipulations."
This is a natural and civilized way of "growing into" the market, experts say. "If we imagine that Western companies will really build dozens of new factories here, it may well turn out that their capacities are so large that Russians simply will not be able to absorb all the drugs produced at them," Sergei Shulyak notes. According to him, no one really counted on such a prospect. In Western countries, where there is no shortage of production sites, some of them are constantly idle, the CEO of DSM Group reminds.
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14.12.2011