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LONDON, UK (GlobalData), 10 July 2013 - Japan can expect steady pharmaceutical market growth in the foreseeable future, despite the explosive rise of generics on the country’s healthcare landscape, says research and consulting firm GlobalData.
The company’s latest report* forecasts the Japanese pharmaceuticals sector to grow in value from an estimated $89.1 billion in 2012 to $104.5 billion by the end of the decade, climbing at a steady, if unremarkable, Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 2%.
Growth within Japan’s pharmaceuticals market will be driven by a number of factors, including a well-developed social healthcare system and an increasingly large elderly population, but the government’s recent promotion of generic drugs is expected to damage revenue within a country historically supportive of branded products.
In 2011, generics accounted for 22.8% of Japan’s pharmaceutical market (in terms of volume), but the implementation of numerous supportive measures in 2012 – including additional premiums for practices that prescribe generics – will see this figure rise to approximately 60% by 2017.
The expansion of generic products within the Japanese pharmaceutical industry will be further boosted by the patent expiries of several key drugs. With blockbuster treatments such as AstraZeneca/Daiichi Sankyo’s Nexium and Bristol-Myers Squibb/Otsuka’s Abilify due to go off-patent in the next few years, Japan’s major generics manufacturers will be keen to move in and maximize revenue in some high-profit treatment areas.
GlobalData expects that the simplification of the regulatory process will act as an important driver of Japan’s pharmaceutical market. The government intends to remove regulatory hurdles by reducing the number of approval reviews required and increasing the number of review members – effectively reducing overall drug approval times.
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