A reduction in market volumes was the highlight of early 2021 for the pharmaceutical industry. However, only retail has been on the decline so far. All the segments in the public sector has been showing double-digit growth rates, which helped the growth rates of the market on the whole, but the positive growth rates are only nominal, due to the inflation rate in the first quarter of 2021 being thrice as high as the growth rate.

In 2020, Russia imported 15.32 billion rubles worth of veterinary vaccines (customs clearance included) from foreign countries except the EEU member states, down 9.4% in monetary terms (rubles) from 2019, because the importers were using up their stocks made in late 2019. The import volume in physical terms amounted to 7.15 million units, or around 43.4 billion dosages. The growth rates are -23.3% in units and -23.1% in dosages.

Russia imported 0.09 billion rubles worth of veterinary vaccines and serums from the EEU countries in 2020 (wholesale prices, VAT excluded). However, most of the products were not manufactured by the EEU member states. Manufacturers from Belarus and Kazakhstan together accounted for only 0.8% of the total import volume, and Armenia and Kyrgyzstan did not ship veterinary vaccines to Russia in 2020 at all.

The total volume of API import to Russia reached an all-time high in 2020 in both monetary and physical terms, amounting to 14.4 thousand tons of APIs, worth 167.1 billion rubles (customs clearance and VAT included). The growth rates are +26.6% in monetary and +13% in physical terms.

Russian manufacturers produced 149.6 billion rubles worth of pharmaceutical drugs between January and March 2021 (manufacturer’s prices, VAT included), up 47% from the same period last year in monetary terms (rubles). While it is early to make predictions, it has been the highest growth rate in five years. The growth rate in physical terms (units) was +7%, with the production volume of 1.07 billion units. The growth rate was even lower, if calculated in MDUs (minimum dosage units), reaching 4.2%, with the production volume of 19.4 billion MDUs.