The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has vowed to make available in the market more generic medicines in line with its priority of promoting health life sciences.
Heeding to the call by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in his first State of the Nation Address (SONA) on Monday for more accessible and lower priced medicines, DTI Secretary Alfredo Pascual at the Post-SONA Economic Briefing yesterday said the agency will encourage the entry of more generic medicines in two ways.
One is through multinational companies whose medicines will be formulated and manufactured locally through tolling arrangements with local companies.
The second way is to encourage the local pharmaceutical industry to go into the production of generics.
In a statement, Johannes Bernabe OIC chairperson of the Philippine Competition Commission (PCC), said the agency since inception has been advocating measures that will eliminate barriers to the entry and viability of generic medicines manufacturers in the country.
Bernabe said the production of unbranded generic medicines in the country lags behind, even among other developing countries.
The Commission has also been consistently monitoring and looking into curtailing possible anti-competitive situations, including cartels, that may exist in the different segments of the supply chain of pharmaceutical products, Bernabe said.
“The Philippines is known to have one of the highest costs of medicines in Asia,” said Bernabe.
Bernabe expressed PCC’s commitment to pursue with even more resolve inquiry into the pharmaceutical sector, on top of its current efforts in this priority sector and to enforce its mandate of cracking down on cartels and abusive conduct across different industries, including this sector.
