Turkish pharma industry grants additional 9.5% discount to social security; legal environment still challenging

With the recent regulatory disposition, the Turkish pharmaceutical industry has granted an additional discount of 9.5% to the Social Security Institution (SGK), bearing the brunt of austerity measures this year, as had been the case last year, and demonstrating once more its readiness to make a sacrifice, as it did in numerous occasions in the past, to support the government in overcoming budget shortages and to preclude any untoward impact on patients’ access to medicines, the research-based sector trade group the AiFD has announced.

It must not be overlooked, however, that Turkey has been undergoing substantial reforms as part of the “Health-Care Transformation Program,” and is a country where access to care and medicines is, as it should be, firmly growing, accompanied by a steady rise in the number of treatment alternatives and frequency of physician calls by patients, which naturally drives up medicine use, it stated.

Turkey's pharmaceutical market was valued at 16.8 billion new lira ($10.83 billion) in 2009, making it the 14th largest globally. Despite a blip in growth expected in 2010, through to 2014, Business Monitor International forecasts the market will reach a value of 25 billion lira ($20.38 billion) at consumer prices.