Pharmaceutical market landscape
The Philippine pharmaceutical industry is comprised of a mixture of multinational corporations (MNCs) and local manufacturers and distributors. MNCs are engaged in the marketing and distribution of finished medicine products as well as raw and intermediate materials. Among the leading MNCs in the country were Pfizer, Glaxosmithkline, BOE. Ingelheim, and AstraZeneca. Meanwhile, local pharmaceutical companies have more diverse roles in the supply chain. Among the leading ones were Unilab and Pascual Laboratories which manufacture their own medicines. Other local companies manufacture for MNCs or are otherwise limited to packaging, distribution, and retail. Overall, there were 403 drug manufacturers in the country in 2021.Due to the limited number of drug manufacturers in the Philippines, the country had been highly reliant on the imports of both raw materials and finished drug products to fulfill the growing domestic demand. In 2020, the import value of pharmaceutical products to the Philippines amounted to about 1.7 billion Philippine pesos, the majority of which were medicaments or pharmaceutical drugs. In that year, India, Germany, and the United States were the leading source countries of pharmaceutical products imported to the Philippines. Additionally, the Philippines imports generic medicines which are procured by the national government as part of its Universal Health Care Act.
