Nomisma report: in 15 years exports have gone from 10 to 55% of the total
Italy is second in Europe for the number of pharmaceutical companies (369) and the sector increases its exports, which rose from 10 to 55% of the total produced over the last fifteen years. Alongside this positive figure, however, there is the inability to attract foreign investments (only 128.8 million dollars have arrived in the last decade) despite the fact that the Italian pharmaceutical market is the fifth largest in the world. Thus, in the ranking of the appeal of Made in Italy pharmaceuticals abroad, Italy is in eleventh place and therefore very far from the USA, France, Germany and Great Britain. What are the reasons? First of all, the insufficiently competitive production conditions compared to other European countries, then the scarce funding or public subsidies for research in the promising field of biotechnology, and again the penalizing interventions of the ministry on prices and the excessive bureaucracy that marks the birth and life of a drug.
The identikit of the sector was elaborated by Nomisma, in a report commissioned by GlaxoSmithKline. According to the research company, the pharmaceutical vocation is strongly concentrated in five regions of the Centre-North: Lombardy (46% of companies), Lazio (24%), Tuscany (10%), Emilia-Romagna (5%), Veneto (4%).
Pharmaceuticals is the leading export sector in Lazio, with a weight of 27%, and has determined almost 70% of the total growth of Lazio exports since 1998. But according to Federfarma, 2007 ended in suffering, saved by exports, with a 10% decrease in expenditure on drugs and a drop in employment of about a thousand units. Since 2002, the Italian pharmaceutical industry has grown by an average of 2% per year, compared to a European average of 5%. Total drug sales (pharmacies plus hospitals) will amount to 16.5 billion in Italy this year. In 2008 the trend is expected to continue in slow motion, with a further shift of consumers towards generic medicines. But the positive effects of some provisions of the Finance Act could already be felt on the market, starting with the higher deductions for research expenses. ItaliaOggi of 27/12/2007, article by Carlo Russo ed. Number 304 p. 9
