Price cuts coming but opportunity remains in Japan's pharma market

Price revisions are being considered this month in Japan, as part of the biennial alterations, but the world’s second largest pharmaceutical market still holds great opportunity for global pharma, according to analysis from Datamonitor Healthcare.

During this process of revision, additional price cuts are also implemented on the prices of drugs that achieved greater sales than initially forecast, due to changes in usage or target population.

Anantharaman Kavassery Viswanathan, analyst at Datamonitor Healthcare, said: “In this latest round of cuts the market expansion rule will impact 11 active ingredients (APIs) and 22 products which mostly include big-selling DPP-4 inhibitor antidiabetics and biologic therapies used mainly in rheumatoid arthritis. Overall, the average cut of 5.64% will be applied on a drug price basis in line with what was expected.”