By the end of 2020, the pharmaceutical market of Ukraine will grow by 5-6% in national currency, while at the beginning of the year a growth of 14% was expected, Director of AstraZeneca Ukraine LLC Yevhen Gaidukov has said.
“If we had a forecast of about 14% growth in the national currency, now we believe that by the end of the year the market will grow by 5-6% in hryvnia, but growth will depend on the U.S. dollar exchange rate,” he said during the European Business Association (EBA) Global Outlook event held in Kyiv on Tuesday.
Gaidukov said that the key challenge faced by the pharmaceutical market in 2020 was the almost complete absence of patients in clinics since April-May and “absolutely panic demand in March.”
“We, as an industry, were not ready for this. Telemedicine and other means of remote communication between a doctor and a patient were undeveloped. This is the reason for the market decline,” he said.
Under the optimistic scenario, Gaidukov predicts the growth of the pharmaceutical market by 10-11% in 2021.
“For 2021, we believe that the market will grow by 10-11% under the optimistic scenario. With regard to our company, we want to grow and this year, we will grow several times faster than the market,” he said.
At the same time, Gaidukov said that the pace of the Ukrainian pharmaceutical market “will strongly depend on the reform of the healthcare system, which has slowed down this year, taking into account the prioritization of other things, in particular COVID-19.”
