Russian official sees some drugs fully replaced with imported

MOSCOW, Apr 20 (PRIME) -- Some Russian pharmaceutical products can be fully substituted by foreign analogues, and the government is holding a monthly monitoring in order to prevent the situation, Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said at a meeting Wednesday.

“The analysis shows that leaving pharmaceutical products are being substituted by both domestic and imported analogues in closest price segments, in fact cheap drugs are leaving the market and are substituted by more expensive ones. The government is holding a monthly monitoring of this situation,” he said.

There are two ways to improve the situation, he said. The first option is to subsidize producers of pharmaceutical products of a lower price segment and the second one implies introduction of regulation of prices for these products, Dvorkovich said.

“As far as subsidies are concerned, the mechanism is possible, but it bears certain significant risks. Because any mechanism of subsidization implies a selective support of producers… There are risks that certain producers will occupy the entire market of a lower segment, because they will use certain formal criteria,” he said.

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