Current issue #39, 2015

Much ado… and nothing

Market players urge state authorities to come to terms

Pharma market players keep criticizing legislature. At virtually every Pharma regulation conference, representatives both of local and foreign companies demonstrate mixed reaction to legislative initiatives of different agencies. At the same time, as most of these initiatives are still at the draft law stage, pharmaceutical companies are trying to assess the risks associated with their implementation, on the one hand, while wondering what are their chances to be implemented, on the other hand. Therefore businesses request that the government harmonized their requirements to Pharma.

[PharmVestnik # 39, 01/12/2015, p. 1, cont’d p 2]

Not sticks alone

Minpromtorg to encourage “deep localization”

The authorities are not ready to admit that businesses are right when stating that localization decisions are rather political than economic. The regulators retort that not a single investment decision is made without a thorough economic analysis. Therefore businesses shall take upcoming regulatory changes as carrots rather than sticks, such “carrots” being intended for those who have managed to reconcile politics and economics and have made decisions on localizing their manufacturing facilities in Russia.

[PharmVestnik # 39, 01/12/2015, p. 3]

Experts: healthcare spending is investment, not costs

On November 23, co-chairmen of All-Russia Patients Union Yan Vlasov and Yury Zhulyov as well as head of the National Medical Chamber Leonid Roshal wrote an open letter to the Russian government, parliament, Ministry of Finance, and Ministry of Health requesting to retain the healthcare expenditures in 2016 budget at the level of the year 2015 adjusted for inflation. The authors of this letter note that budget cuts will not be able to resolve all problems as Russia’s healthcare is not sufficiently funded; at the same time, they insist on increasing health spending in future. The experts believe that healthcare fundi...