Lilly Calls For Higher French Drug Prices

Randall Tobias, president of US drugmaker Eli Lilly, has called for"more equitable recognition" by the French government of the value of pharmaceutical products. Mr Tobias met ministers and officials at the French Ministry of Health to discuss the price of innovative drugs, and said later that if prices remained too low and were not in line with those in the rest of Europe, France "took the risk of discouraging investors" and of seeing the departure of the latest technologies.

Lilly has a plant at Fegersheim in Alsace, which is the most important in the group outside the USA, especially for making injectable products. The plant, which employs 900 people, represents 1.8 billion French francs ($306.2 million) of investment since 1989. A new unit has been added for processing human insulin, and Lilly has just inaugurated an enzymes production unit at a cost of 5 million francs. Fegersheim also produces antibiotics, anticancer agents and growth hormones.

Lilly France, which has an 8% share of the French pharmaceutical market, posted 1996 sales of 2.9 billion francs, of which exports accounted for 1.2 billion francs. The Alsace plant exports almost 90% of its production and while this limits the impact of low drug prices in France, Mr Tobias pointed out that the country where the drug is made often serves as a reference (price) for others.