Romania's pharma market sees strong first half 2010 growth, says IMS

Romania's pharmaceutical market grew in value by 15.4% year-on-year in the first half of 2010, to reach a total of 4.88 billion lei ($1.5 billion), according to data from IMS Health, reported by Romanian economic news provider Money.ro.

In euro terms, the increase was 17.6% to 1.17 billion euro ($1.5 billion). The main driver of growth in the sector was prescription drugs, sales of which increased 17.4% to 4.33 billion lei, while hospital drugs showed a contrasting trend, with a fall in sales by value of 5%, to 519 million lei. Sales of over-the-counter (OTC) drugs edged up during the period by 1.3% to 545.3 million.

In volume terms, the picture was very different, with the market growing by only 0.8% during the first half of this year compared to first-half 2009, to 240.4 million units. Prescription drugs again led the way in volume terms, with an increase of 2.5% to 175.4 million units, while there was a sharp 12.4% decline in the volume of the hospital drug market to 17.2 million units. A decline was also recorded in the OTC sector, of 3.7%.