BMI View: The Brazilian government has become increasingly proactive in supporting local pharmaceutical industry through partnership deals with multinational pharmaceutical companies. The government aims to overcome the drug pricing barrier, expanding access to essential medicines for local patients and promoting local drug production. However, we believe multinationals in partnership deals with the Brazilian government will eventually lose their market shares to local producers.
Headline Expenditure Projections
- Pharmaceuticals: BRL52.4bn (US$26.8bn) in 2012 to BRL57.0bn (US$27.5bn) in 2013; +8.7% in local currency terms and 2.7% in US dollars terms. Forecast down from Q113 due to less optimistic industry projections.
- Healthcare: BRL375.8bn (US$224.4bn) in 2012 to BRL408.3bn (US$209.0bn) in 2013; +10.1% in local currency terms and 3.9% in US dollars. Forecast upwards from Q113 due to more optimistic historical data.
Risk/Reward Rating: Brazil's position in the Americas Pharmaceutical Risk/Reward Rating (RRR) system - which ranks markets according to attractiveness to multinational drugmakers - has remained in fifth place for Q213. This is also the case for all other countries in BMI's proprietary system that ranks pharmaceutical markets according to attractiveness to multinational drugmakers. A minor re-weighting of one of the RRR components is being implemented to improve the tool, and the adjusted scores for all markets will be published in the Q313 updates of the Pharmaceuticals & Healthcare reports
Key Trends And Developments
- In January 2013, the Brazilian government announced it will produce its first generic version of imatinib through state-owned drug producer the Institute of Drug Technology (Farmanguinhos). Health Minister Alexandre Padilla has promised to increase the production of imatinib to 5mn units in 2013, enough to supply the domestic market with the aim of avoiding international market fluctuation. Farmanguinhos currently produces just 220,000 unites of the medicine. Imatinib, the anti-cancer drug marketed by Novartis under the trade name of Glivec, will first be distributed for free in the public hospitals through the National Health Service, then to the local market at a much lower price than the imported version.
- In January 2013, Brazil's Ministry of Health and Ukrainian insulin producer, Indar, launched a third-stage practical implementation of the agreement on the supply of insulin to Brazil. The contract was agreed by the presidents of Ukraine and Brazil in October 2011 as part of bilateral economic co-operation projects. In 2012, Indar supplied 3.5mn vials of insulin to Brazil and trained a team of experts from research organisation Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) to produce insulin in Brazil.
- In November 2012, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) entered a five-year partnership with the Brazilian state-own drug producer Institute of Drug Technology (Farmanguinhos) to produce its antibiotic drug Amoxil (amoxicillin) locally, which was previously produced in Mexico and imported into Brazil. The partnership, including technology transfers, scientific collaboration and professional training, will support the local production of antibiotics.
- In November 2012, Pfizer and Israel-based drugmaker Protalix were negotiating a supply deal for Elelyso (taliglucerase alfa). This contract with the Brazilian government could potentially be worth millions of dollars
BMI Economic View: Following Brazil's unexpectedly-weak Q312 growth data, which showed that both fixed investment and the banking sector continue to drag down economic activity, we have revised down our average real GDP growth forecast for 2012 to 1.0% (from 1.5% previously). That said, we anticipate a significant pickup in economic activity in 2013, as we expect a backlog of infrastructure projects and a modest uptick in private consumption will boost growth to 3.5% in 2013.
BMI Political View: The recent increase in crime and violence in Sao Paulo highlights the continued spread of the Primeiro Comando da Capital gang in recent years, as well as the relative fragility of the security situation in some of the country's urban areas. Moreover, with anti-crime programmes likely to ramp up in both Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro over the coming quarters, we see potential for operational and security risks to head higher as well..