Russian Move To Generics Sector Is Forecast

Russian pharmaceutical industry observers believe that the country'sdrug enterprises will have to revise their product ranges in order to survive, and that this will entail a significant shift towards the generics sector.

Sharbell Akkermann of Boston Consulting Group has said that when companies have made the shift, they will have to constantly revise their range of drug products and introduce new generic versions of drugs whose patents have expired not more than two years earlier, so as to be able to maintain high prices.

Originally, the stress on the drug industry was import substitution, given the high dependence on Belarus for magnesium sulfate production and the concentration in the Baltic states of anesthetics such as droperidol and fentanyl. Traditional dependence on certain eastern European countries for imports - especially Hungary - has also been high.