The Current Climate of Clinical Trials in Russia and Ukraine | Page 5

While the costs of drugs within these covered programs
remain stable, the cost of drugs that are not covered
by reimbursement programs can be prohibitive; prices
for these drugs have increased a median of 40%.17
Unfortunately, the proportion of the population that
is not covered by a government-sponsored program is
larger than the proportion that is covered.
Pharmaceutical Market in Russia
As a result of the health-care coverage, there are two
main segments to the pharmaceutical market in Russia.
The first is the state-owned segment, which includes all
medications purchased by the government and provided
free to inpatients and via the drug reimbursement
programs. The second is the commercial segment, which
includes prescription and non-prescription medications
that can be purchased in pharmacies at the consumers’
own expense.16

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The Russian
pharmaceutical market
is ranked 11th in market
size globally and is
expected to move to the
8th ranking by 2017.18

Market Growth
The pharmaceutical market is ranked 11th in market
size globally and is expected to move to the 8th ranking
by 2017.18 As such, it is one of the fastest growing in
the world, with an annual growth of >10%.18,19 The
market turnover in 2013 was 1,045 billion rubles (17.4
billion USD), and the commercial segment increased
by 13.5%.18 In 2014, this value had increased to 1,174
billion rubles (18.3 billion USD) in final consumption.
While the production of drugs domestically continues to
increase, ~75% of the monetary value of the drugs used
are produced abroad.12
Pharma 2020 Initiative
To help increase local drug production and innovation,
the Pharma 2020 initiative was launched in 2009 by the
government with a commitment of $4.8 billion USD
(177.6 billion rubles).16,20 The goals of this program
include making 60% of local medicines innovative,
local production of pharmaceuticals to be >50% of local
consumption and local production to provide 90% of
essential drugs by 2020.
As part of this initiative, pharmaceutical clusters have
been developed as groups of geographically localized,
interconnected, innovative drug-development and
drug-producing companies that work closely with
universities. There are currently five clusters in Yaroslavl,
Kaluga, Saint Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Moscow.
One benefit of operating within one of these clusters is
tax optimization.
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