Russian government tasked to saturate domestic market with its own drugs

MOSCOW, May 16, 22:47 /ITAR-TASS/. Russian government is to saturate the domestic market with 90% of medications produced inside the country before 2018, prime minister Dmitry Medvedev wrote on his social network account on Friday assessing a session of the presidential Commission for Modernisation and Technological Development of Russia's Economy that was held in St. Petersburg on Friday and was focused on Russia’s pharmaceutical market.

“Russia must manufacture vital drugs itself,” Medvedev said. “Our target is to start producing 90% of these essential medications inside the country till 2018,” the prime minister said.

Speaking at the session, Medvedev said that, in financial terms, medicinal products in Russia would surpass 1,000 billion roubles (about 28.8 million U.S. dollars) on the domestic market in near future but domestically produced drugs occupied a rather small niche there.

In 2013, the volume of the Russian pharmaceutical market climbed eight percent to amount to nearly 820 billion roubles (over 23 billion U.S. dollars). “Forecasts say in several years’ time the market will exceed a trillion roubles (about 28.8 billion U.S. dollars),” he said.

Pharmaceuticals totalled about 200 billion roubles (5.76 billion U.S. dollars) on the market and the segment “has good prospects for a speedy growth.”

“Unfortunately, the demand for these products is still satisfied by the foreign manufacturers, while a share of the domestic products on the Russian market is about one fifth and medications occupy slightly over one fourth [of the supplies],” he said.

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