Public pharmaceutical expenditure (pharmacies) in Spain

Data from the Spanish Ministry of Health, Social Services and Equality shows that in January, public pharmaceutical expenditure at pharmacies experienced a growth of 1.67%, compared to the registered accumulated figure of January 2015.

This variation in expenditure is due to a rise in the number of prescriptions (+0.95%) and an increase in the average price of prescriptions (+0.72%). The accumulated expenditure to 12-months in January was 3.21 million euros ($3.6 million) lower than the recorded high in May 2010 (a 25.3% decline), according to a posting on trade group Farmaindustria’s website.

In annual terms, pharmaceutical expenditure fell -1.03% in January in comparison to January 2015. The drop was primarily brought about by the significant reduction in the demand side for prescriptions (-4.6%) and the main reason behind this is that January 2016 has one working day less than January 2015; this has an immediate impact on the turnover of prescriptions. Similarly, it is expected to see a circumstantial increase on the demand side in February in comparison to February 2015, produced by the same fact, however this time it will be contrary to January as February 2016 was a leap-year and so it had one extra working day than in the previous year.