Healthy Skepticism Library item: 17515
Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.
Publication type: news
Ghosh A
Glaxo Plans to Increase Drug Sales to Middle-Income Countries
Business Week 2010 Mar 9
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-03-09/glaxo-plans-to-increase-drug-sales-to-middle-income-countries.html
Full text:
GlaxoSmithKline Plc, the U.K.’s largest drugmaker, plans to bolster earnings by selling to more people in middle-income countries after cutting prices in the world’s poorest nations.
“Our strategy is to grow our business in middle income countries by increasing the volume of products we sell,” Chief Executive Andrew Witty said in an e-mailed interview. Extending Glaxo’s flexible pricing program for such nations would “improve the affordability of our medicines, increase access for patients with lower income levels and be profitable for GSK,” he said.
Glaxo has stepped up expansion in emerging regions including Asia to counter slowing demand in the U.S. The London- based company said in October revenue from developing nations climbed 25 percent in the third quarter, compared with a 12 percent drop in the U.S., the world’s largest drug market.
The maker of the Advair asthma treatment said it is adopting flexible pricing models worldwide and cut prices by an average of 45 percent in the poorest countries from April 2009.
Middle-income nations are “diverse in terms of economic status, demography and healthcare infrastructure which can vary significantly,” Witty said yesterday in the e-mail, which didn’t identify individual countries. “Taking a single pricing approach would be difficult, inappropriate and inequitable.”
Witty, who travelled to Nashik, central India, for a factory opening yesterday, said Glaxo will consider acquisitions as part of its expansion plan in the country.
“Opportunities will be evaluated based on a variety of factors including the strategic nature of the fit,” the CEO said. “We are actively looking at growing organically and in- organically.”
