Great effort is required by the domestic pharmaceutical companies toexpand their share in the medicine market, which is currently largelydominated by imported drugs.

The Ministry of Health's Departmentof Pharmaceutical Management said that even though there were morevarieties of locally-manufactured medicines in the market than importedmedicines, the consumption of the former was lower.

Data showedthat Vietnam has more than 130 companies, which meet good manufacturingpractices (GMP) and produce about 12,000 kinds of drugs, while there arejust around 11,000 categories of imported medicines.

The annualaverage spending on medicine by Vietnamese reached 31.18 USD per person,but a large percentage of that was for imported medicines, which arepriced higher.
The consumption value of domestic medicines made up for 48 percent of the total value.

In 2014, Vietnam imported more than 2 billion USD pharmaceuticalproducts from 30 countries, reflecting an 8.3 percent growth over theyear before, the Vietnam Industry and Trade Information Centre under theMinistry of Industry and Trade said.

In addition,domestic pharmaceutical production was hugely dependent on importedmaterials, which accounted for up to 90 percent. Technology was also ahuge problem for most domestic medicine producers.

The national strategy of developing the pharmaceutical industry wastargeted at the industry producing 20 percent of raw materials fordomestic production and 80 percent of the total medicine consumptionvalue by 2020.

According to the Director of theDepartment of Pharmaceutical Management, Truong Quoc Cuong, thepharmaceutical industry should invest in producing generic drugs of ahigh quality, which could replace imported drugs in treatment.

Cuong said the potential of traditional medicines should bebrought into full play, adding that priority should be given todeveloping raw material plantation areas.-VNA