Author
Listed:
- Tabuga, Aubrey D.
- Lavado, Rouselle F.
- Reyes, Celia M.
- Asis, Ronina D.
- Datu, Maria Blesila G.
Abstract
The Philippines is one of the biggest pharmaceutical markets in the ASEAN region, next only to Indonesia and Thailand. It is a lifeline to thousands of Filipino workers and a significant contributor in terms of value of output. This industry is one of the fastest growing industries in the country. Meanwhile, its output, drugs and medicines, account for 46 percent of the total medical out-of-pocket expenses of Philippine households. For poorer people, this percentage goes up to 55 percent. Making essential drugs and medicines more affordable especially to the poor and underserved is one of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). It is therefore essential to examine the profile of the pharmaceutical industry in the country to better understand the supply chain of drugs and medicines for policy formulation purposes. Using administrative data from agencies that have regulative powers over the industry, a profile of the Philippine pharmaceutical industry was developed. As of December 2009, the Food and Drug Administration’s records show that there are 284 drug manufacturers, 438 drug traders, 634 drug importers, 4,719 drug distributors of which 3,956 are wholesalers, and 32,538 retail outlets. Manufacturing is dominated by multinational brand originator giants and numerous local generics/branded generics producers. Meanwhile, trading is done by few large companies and thousands of small retail outlets. The industry players are diverse and formulating policies therefore must take into consideration how each player may be affected by policy issuances.
Suggested Citation
Tabuga, Aubrey D. & Lavado, Rouselle F. & Reyes, Celia M. & Asis, Ronina D. & Datu, Maria Blesila G., 2011.
"A Profile of the Philippine Pharmaceutical Sector,"
Discussion Papers
DP 2011-11, Philippine Institute for Development Studies.
Handle:
RePEc:phd:dpaper:dp_2011-11
Download full text from publisher
Corrections
All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:phd:dpaper:dp_2011-11. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael Ralph M. Abrigo (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/pidgvph.html .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.