Spanish pharmaceutical industry attacks effects of parallel trading

The Spanish drug industry body, Farmindustria, has told the Ministry of Health that a new study has shown some 68% of pharmacies affected by shortages of drug supplies created - the study claims to show - by parallel trading. Major distributors have sold a proportion of the drugs purchased from Spanish pharmaceutical companies for export at a higher price.

Last year, the prevalence of the practice sparked a controversy as Pfizer decided to initiate direct drug sales to the pharmacies, putting it on a war footing with the large distribution cooperatives such as Cofares and Hefame. Juan Ignacia Guenechea, vice president of Cofares, which has a 19.3% of the market, has maintained that the practice of parallel trading is legal in terms of European law, although this did not mean that Cofares was involved as its central task was to supply the national market.

However, the Farmindustria study focuses on the impact of parallel trading in creating supply deficits with some 88% of pharmacies reporting shortages of over three days' duration. The study surveyed some 1,100 pharmacies between April and May of this year. Around 50% of the pharmacies were in urban areas with 67% of those interviewed owning their own businesses. Various reasons were given in the survey to explain the shortages but around 49% attributed the problem to the practice of wholesale distributors of exporting drugs intended for national consumption into more lucrative foreign markets. Stock management failures, problems with production and increases in demand were also blamed by some pharmacies for the shortages and 35% of them blamed the drug companies for the problem.