The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 272 No 7293 p406
3 April 2004

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ABPI: Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (www.abpi.org.uk)

Drug trade surplus grows 15% to £3.1bn

British pharmaceutical exports in 2003 were worth £11.8bn and exceeded imports by £3.1bn. This makes pharmaceuticals one of the three pillars of the British economy, along with financial services and the oil and gas industry, according to Andrew Curl, deputy director-general of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry.

Presenting the ABPI annual review for 2003, Mr Curl said that UK pharmaceutical companies spent nearly £10m a day on research and development.

But he complained that modern medicines were not well used in the UK.

“Britain is bottom of the international league table for the adoption of modern medicines. This cannot be good for patients,” he said. “We adopt new medicines at 50 per cent of the rate of France, Italy and Germany. Medicines introduced in the past five years have only a 15 per cent market share.”

The price of new medicines is not what stops them being use, Mr Curl suggested. “In real terms, branded medicine prices are 15 per cent lower than 10 years ago,” he said. “And by 2007, medicines will have fallen from 12 per cent to 10 per cent of total NHS spending.”