Over 2200 Medicines Will Notice Price Increases In January 2017

Private producers of medicines, which number reached nearly 80 factories, prepare the increases in the prices of certain items in the national market by the beginning of January 2017, and it comes to the medicines that are produced locally, and which prices did not move since more than 15 years, at a time when they complain, in their proposals which they sent to the Ministry of Health, population and hospital reform, from the high prices of imported medicines, and the high cost of medicines that are produced locally, after the increasing electricity and fuel prices over the finance act for the current year, and the high costs of the spare parts, knowing that the number of items that are produced locally reach 2263 varieties.

Producers of medicines launched, since months ago, negotiations with the Ministry of Health to raise the pricing of medicines, after a large increase in the cost which makes the profit margins shrink significantly, at a time when they attend to invest locally through the development of plants for local production with the aim of national coverage of the market and exporting abroad, which requires, according to them, facilities from the government, by primarily reducing the burdensome costs, as they cover 45% of the drug bill in Algeria, and 55% of the size of the existing drugs on the market.

Head of the Pharmacists Syndicate, Messaoud Belambri, told Echorouk, that the domestic prices of medicines did not notice a review since more than 15 years, despite a change of all the market data from the prices of raw materials, spare parts and salaries of workers and the wage-base, as the latest price increases were applied on electricity and fuel during the finance bill for the current year, which makes maintaining the same prices an encroachment on the right of the producers, who are asked in the future to defeat the import bill and increase production, through the completion of production units locally.

“Pricing that is fixed by the Ministry of Health in coordination with the producer, according to the figures that are relating to the cost of production and the established benchmark price that is fixed at the social security level to compensate customers, which is usually not adjusted every time the price of medicines is increasing, which makes the difference between the price that is paid by the customer and the price of compensation.”

“Social Security recently released a list of drugs that are involved in the reference for compensation, and which was relatively increased, but that did not change the pricing of medicines that are still conducted with the provisions of the nineties”.

“Rising of drugs’ imports bill for this year is because the Ministry of Health rushed earlier this year in the release of the quota of imports unlike in previous years, when licenses were postponed until the comparison of prices that was suggested by the global laboratories with those adopted in Algeria, which caused a scarcity in the first months that was avoided by the government this year, and we expected stability in the import bill for the end of 2016, although it is relatively difficult, because of the increasing number of people with chronic diseases, and the rising needs for medication from year to year.