Canada's PMPRB reports slow-down in pharma sales

In its annual report for 2010 released to Canada’s Parliament last week, the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board’s (PMPRB) said that sales of patented drug products declined to C$12.9 billion ($13.17 billion) in 2010, a decrease of 3.4% from C$13.3 billion in 2009.

The growth in sales has undergone a pronounced decline in recent years. Throughout the latter part of the 1990s, sales growth was largely driven by a succession of new “blockbuster” products that achieved very high sales volumes; in 1999, annual sales growth was 27.0%, the PMPRB report pointed out. However, since that time the pharmaceutical industry has not introduced new high-volume products in sufficient numbers to sustain double-digit sales growth. Older drug products, introduced between 1995 and 1999, still accounted for a substantial share of 2010 sales.

The share of patented drug products in overall drug sales has also declined since 2003, implying that sales of generic and non-patented branded drug products have grown faster than those of patented drug products, the report stated.