The Pharmaceutical Market: Argentina

Summary

Argentina is the third largest pharmaceutical market in Latin America, after Mexico and Brazil, although Venezuela is catching up. Mexico and Brazil offer more incentives for multinationals to set up their regional subsidiaries. As a result, some international companies have closed their plants and opted for third-party contract manufacturing and the development of local clinical studies in Argentina.

The incidence of drug counterfeiting is high in the internal market. The local industry needs to reaffirm its position and, in fact, leading local producers have expanded their production capabilities. Regional integration continues in the Mercosur group, which now also includes Venezuela. Export opportunities exist in the medium term but, in the meantime, local producers claim a lack of incentives to stimulate investments and exports; local producers represent around 36% of total exports.

The draft of the new pharmaceutical law aims to ratify generic prescribing. The government is using price controls as a short-term cost-containment measure. There is no adequate protection against unfair commercial use of undisclosed data and other data submitted in the marketing approval process. A new resolution has been issued to regulate the promotion of prescription-only medicines targeting health professionals. All these are factors which act as barriers for research-based producers.

This is a different picture from the Argentina which deregulated the pharmaceutical market during the 1990s, when it liberated drug prices; decreased market barriers, particularly in distribution channels; reinforced drug quality controls via the Medicines Agency ANMAT; and established a 20-year period patent protection, at least theoretically. The market became less competitive and the economy plummeted, therefore the Ministry of Health was obliged to launch a new policy for medicines in 2002.

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