Russian pharma market falls by volume but leaps by value

The production of drugs in Russia for the first five months of the current year fell by almost 10% on year-on-year basis to 1.7 billion units in volume terms, but grew by 25.9% up to 239.1 billion roubles ($3.2 billion) in terms of value, according to a study conducted by the Russian analytics company RNC Pharma.

According to the study, in volume terms the market has shown the worst result since 2018, when Russian companies produced 1.6 billion drug packages. By contrast, in value terms the growth was the highest since 2014.

The reduction in production was primarily observed in the case of non-prescription drugs, shipments of which fell 16% year on year. At the same time, the decline of production of prescription drugs was only 1%, compared to 2020. One of the reasons of this is the fall in incomes of local population and the reduction in consumption of non-essential products in Russia.