Pakistani pharma co’s outperforming MNCs: Report

Despite supply chain caused due to COVID-19 pandemic, Pakistan’s pharmaceutical industry has emerged among the fastest-growing industry in the world.

As per IQVIA, an American multinational company report, the Pakistani pharmaceutical companies have shown a cumulative average growth rate or CAGR of 13.1 percent in the last four years, as compared to Multinational Companies (MNCs), which observed a CAGR of 9.34 percent.

As per IQVIA report, medicine spending growth in the pharmerging markets continues to slow compared to the past five years and is projected to grow at 5–8pc through 2023. Although China, Brazil, and India have the greatest medicine spending within the pharmerging markets, Turkey, Egypt and Pakistan are forecast to have the greatest growth between 2019 and 2023.

The report forecasted that the global pharmaceutical market will exceed $1.5 trillion by 2023 growing at a 3–6pc compound annual growth rates over the next five years – a notable slowdown from the 6.3% seen over the past five years.

According to the Pakistan Economic Survey 2019-20, the pace of contraction diminished in the pharmaceutical sector. It registered 5.38 percent decline during July to March in FY-2020 as compared to 8.66 percent decline in the corresponding period. Similarly, the sector recorded the highest sales in March while it fetched $1.3 million Foreign Direct Investment in April 2020. However, the provisional GDP growth rate for Financial Year 2020 is estimated at a negative growth of 0.38 percent.

Pakistan's pharmaceutical industry is an essential, high technology and a strategically important industry. Hence, at the present growth rate the market size for pharmaceuticals will double in the next 10 years in Pakistan. The Mckinsey & Company in a report commissioned by the Planning Commission of Pakistan and Asian Development Bank identified the pharmaceutical industry as a sunrise industry.