Russian pharma market will reach $35 billion by 2024

The Russian drug market will reach a value of $35 billion by 2024, despite the ongoing military conflict between Russia and Ukraine and the ever-tightening sanctions pressure on Russia, according to calculations by experts from the Russian consulting company in the field of pharmaceuticals SBS Consulting, report The Pharma Letter’s local correspondent.

According to the analysts, in 2021 the Russian drug market amounted to 1.9 trillion roubles ($31.4 billion). The share of imported products amounted to 39% in packages and 65% in value terms - much less than a few years ago. According to the report, in 2010-2020, more than 100 foreign manufacturers localized the production of 400 drugs at the sites of Russian companies. However, Russia's dependence on imported pharmaceutical raw materials continues to be high and amounts to approximately 80%. Most of the imports (76%) come from India and China, with a relatively small share from the European Union (20%). In the event of tougher sanctions, it may affect the supply of raw materials - increase their cost or make them completely inaccessible to the Russian market.

At the same time, the authors of the report said that there are no countries in the world where the model of full localization of pharmaceutical raw materials would be successfully implemented - its maximum level was achieved in countries with a large domestic market and global positions in the pharmaceutical industry, such as the USA (68% of the national market of substances) and China (90%). Among countries with a closed economy, only Iran (66%) managed to achieve a high level of import substitution.