The Philippine Development Plan 2023-2028 has included a program to attract leading multinational companies (MNCs) to invest in the local pharmaceutical sector and help it become self-sufficient.
This was reflected in the Health and Life Science (HLS) cluster, one of several clusters that are expected to abet the country’s pursuit of industrialization.
The HLS cluster aims to make the Philippines self-sufficient in pharmaceuticals, medical devices, healthcare services, digital health products and services. The latter includes personal health wellness technology products, therapeutic systems addressing chronic diseases, telemedicine solutions, and artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted diagnoses.
The PDP stressed that the HLS cluster plays a “strategic” role in opening income-generating opportunities for the country especially after a health crisis caused the global economic distress.
“The pharmaceutical sector will attract leading multinational companies while promoting the domestic suppliers’ network,” the PDP 2023-2028 read.
The Plan stressed that the pharmaceutical manufacturers have shown resilience, growing at 5.8 percent in 2019 to 2020 despite the lockdowns.
Last November, Philippine Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association (PPMA) President Higinio P. Porte Jr. said the local pharmaceutical industry is doubling down on making the industry competitive locally. It is also eyeing to increase its supply to the Department of Health (DOH).
Porte said that time that the pandemic paved the way for the Philippines to realize the need to boost the manufacturing of local pharmaceuticals. He also noted that the country lost supply amid the pandemic when India, one of the countries the Philippines is importing Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) from, stopped exporting as it grappled with a deadly Covid surge. This caused disruptions in supply to the Philippines.
Economies of scale
ACCORDING to Porte, the Philippines imports 68 percent of pharmaceuticals, majority of which come from China, India, and European countries.
He added that the imported APIs include “excipients,” which he described as ingredients that render tablets thicker, thinner or more adhesive.
As for the contents of pharmaceuticals that are being produced locally, he said “the only local [ingredient] used here is sugar, which has been having its own problems in the past few months.”
Other local raw materials are alcohol and herbal pharmaceutical material like lagundi and sambong.
“But the rest of the synthetics are all imported. We don’t have local manufacturing of API.” Andrea San Juan
The PPMA head earlier said the high cost of producing medicines in the Philippines can be attributed to the lack of “economies of scale,” which in turn springs from a relatively small requirement.
Porte also noted the local pharmaceutical industry is currently building its production capacity. However, he said the capacity is not being “put to use” as the local market cannot level the playing field with competitors such as China and India.
“They have their own APIs, they have full support of the government in terms of manufacturing cost. They are subsidized,” Porte said. (Full story here: https://businessmirror.com.ph/2022/11/14/phl-pharma-sector-targets-60-market-share-in-10-yrs/)