E-drug: Prices of essential drugs in developing countries (cont'd)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
May I just share with you what I deem goes into drug pricing in the
Philippines. All of our raw materials are imported and therefore price is
dictated by the supplier (like oil) which is already marked up. It is
imposed a tariff (3% to 7%, I do not know which is used for drugs).
Price is again marked up by the manufacturing arm of the pharmaceu-
tical company and the distributor. No value added tax is added but a
specific tax for drug is incorporated. The retailer also places a mark
up. The final price of the drug is thus a reflection of all these
components assuring profit for all of these players. Unfortunately, like
oil, drug is an imported product that is dictated by the supplier and
does not follow market forces or the law of supply and demand. So
there it is, the tender trap that we are in.
Warning, this did not come from reported data it was composed from
bits and pieces of information that a researcher on drug pricing needs
to dig up because transparency in drug pricing is non existent here.
Jody Vergeire-Dalmacion,MD
Assoc Professor
Department of Pharmacology
UP College of Medicine
E-mail :jrvd1953@yahoo.com
Tel 0 632 5218251
--
Send mail for the `E-Drug' conference to `e-drug@usa.healthnet.org'.
Mail administrative requests to `majordomo@usa.healthnet.org'.
For additional assistance, send mail to: `owner-e-drug@usa.healthnet.org'.