P-I threat to UK pharma balance of trade

UK pharmaceutical exports are estimated to have been worth a record L7.1billion ($10.06 billion) in 2000, compared with L5.9 billion in 1999, which would give an excess balance of trade for the sector of around L2.3 billion, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry has announced.

However, drug imports also reached a record high last year, up nearly 12% to L4.8 billion, it is estimated, and this comes on top of a 24% increase in imports in 1999, ABPI director general Trevor Jones told journalists at the launch of the Association's Annual Review. He said that he remains particularly concerned over the inroads that parallel imports are making into the sector's balance of trade, noting that, while the industry is "among the very top contributors to Britain's world trading position....[it] is being continually threatened by companies that exploit different government pricing policies across Europe to undercut prices" in the UK.

Parallel imports cost the UK-based industry over L750 million a year, said Dr Jones, with more than one in eight prescriptions in the UK now filled with such products, accounting for 10% of sales. The only real beneficiaries of the trade are international arbitrageurs, he said, and asked: "why invest in the UK if the National Health Service buys abroad?"