Annals of the University of Oradea: Economic Science (Dec 2011)
THE PRODUCTION OF MEDICINES IN ROMANIA AFTER 1990. WHAT'S THE REASON FOR IMPORTS?
Abstract
Since 1990, Romania turned itself slowly but surely, from a large drugs producer, which has used to supplydrugs to the whole former Council for Mutual Economic Assistance Member States, and with a net positive trade balance in medicine sector, into a large drugs importer, trying hardly to attract investors which could produce medicines not only for the Romanian domestic market, but also for all other Eastern European markets, Ukraine, Russia and Turkey. This paper focuses on the empirical analisys of the medicines production sector in Romania after 1990, aiming to emphasises the factors which have mostly affected this industry, in correlation with different interests and reasons which determined the increasing imports of drugs during the last years, by underlying at the same time, the role of the new public authority in charge of supervising the distribution and import of medicines in Romania, The National Medicines Administration (NMA). The paper relevance relies in the fact that Romania registered during the last years drug imports of an average of 1.7 billion euros, while the drug exports were only around 0,1 billions euros, according to the computations made on the data provided by the Romanian Institute of National Statistics (INS). The most imported products are patent drugs, which are more expensive than those produced by the domestic manufactured. At the same time, Romania registered an increase of the pharmaceutical market of around 20% only since its EU integration, this market proven to be largely driven by expensive products. Our research conducted to the conclusion that the Romanian resort authorities have to immediately adopt measures meant to limit consumption of expensive drugs, on the one side, and to reinforce the domestic manufacturers on the other side, even by attracting major investors in this sector. We have also identified that there is a large competitiveness for Romanian medicine products on the international market, due to its production costs (Romania still is a low cost economy in this sector), as well as due to its tradition.
