‘Medicine prices 200% higher in RP’

ANGELES CITY — A Pampanga lawmaker has filed a bill in the House of Representatives seeking to regulate the cost of medicines sold in the Philippines, which is now almost 200 percent higher than in other countries.

Pampanga Rep. Reynaldo Aquino, vice-chairman of the House committee on health and a practicing physician before he joined politics, said his committee will give priority to the bill as soon as its draft is finalized.

"This is because many pharmaceutical firms spend too much on advertising and even on pampering doctors to promote their products," he said.

"But there are less expensive ways of product promotion. There is a need for legislation for this," Aquino said.

The bill has with 15 other lawmaker-doctors as co-sponsors.

At a press briefing, Aquino said the prices of medicines, on the average, are 200 percent higher here than those in other countries.

In 1999, the Department of Health and the Department of Trade and Industry made a study indicating that five out of nine sampled drugs cost more in the Philippines than in Malaysia or Indonesia, he added.

Aquino said the antibiotic Amoxil costs more here than in the United Kingdom and Canada, despite the fact that locally sold brands are made of the same ingredients as those sold abroad.

A study conducted by the non-government organization Executive Net International showed medicines cost a lot in the Philippines because of "import dependence," "transfer pricing," overpricing, promotional expenses and patent costs, among other factors, he added.

Aquino said his bill would also seek more support from the government for the development of a local pharmaceutical industry, since almost all raw materials used in local drug manufacturing are imported.

Studies indicate that only 150 of 500 essential drugs are produced locally, amid complaints from local manufacturers that importation would be less expensive, he added.

Aquino said unless the government considers more lenient tax policies on local pharmaceuticals, the practice of so-called transfer pricing would not be curbed.

This practice refers to the purchase of raw materials by drug subsidiary companies from their mother company abroad at prices much higher than world market prices to avoid taxes on profit or to skirt the government’s policies on profit remittance to their mother firms, he added.

Aquino said studies indicated that promotional costs comprise some 12 to 45 percent of the prices of medicines.