Current issue #15, 2015

Life at command

Belarusian pharmacies are under a heavy administrative pressure

The out-of-pocket sector of the Belarusian pharma market is under a strict government control aimed at implementing import substitution. According to President Alexander Lukashenko’s concept, local drugs shall account of 50% of the national pharma market in value terms by the end of 2015. In order to solve the task set in an extremely short time, the national authorities started fighting the drug import using administrative techniques that has put pressure on distributors, retail chains, and staff of the country’s medical facilities. Experts believe that such policy does not further stimulate the interest of the Russian pharmaceutical distributors, which is presently quite low, to a rather small Belarusian market.

[PharmVestnik #15, 28/04/2015, p. 1, cont’d p. 8]

Temporarily out of reach. Await reply

Pharmaceutical business is apprehensive about new legislative initiatives

Apparently, just very few people know based on what principle representatives of industry-specific ministries choose places where to communicate with the business community. And, mostly like, the conference on legal issues of the pharma industry hosted by The Moscow Times on April 21 broke this principle. It is not so important now whether it was the event planner’s fault or the experts from the Ministry of Industry and Trade, Ministry of Health, Federal Antimonopoly Service, and Federal Tariff Service who were to speak were busy at the time. The conference participants were eager to listen to the officials, but finally they had to discuss all the issues among themselves. Probably that was why the conference’s mood was rather pessimistic. All latest ministerial initiatives were strongly criticized, while there was no one to respond.

[PharmVestnik #15, 28/04/2015, pp. 2- 3]

Crisis is no obstacle for digital technologies

Marketing consultants recommend pharma companies to focus on web-based drug promotion

E-visits and other means of communication between pharma companies and doctors that are already quite popular in Western countries just start making their way to Russia. However, the efficiency of multichannel drug promotion is set to increase; therefore expert believe that this promo mode shall be included in the corporate strategic plans already today, especially taking into account unavoidable cost-cutting regarding field force under the crisis.

[PharmVestnik #15, 28/04/2015, p. 4]

Pharma academics made th...