Recently there has been news in the press claiming that some new regulations that have been facilitated in the aftermath of increasing discounts in public pharmaceuticals purchases and the reducing pharmaceutical prices have solved the problems being experienced by the sector. However this news does not fully reflect the state of our sector.

The 7.5% discount within the context of the new regulation implemented by the Social Security Institution last month for 125 pharmaceuticals was decided not to be applied, price determination on 100 pharmaceuticals was asked to the Ministry of Health and a decision was made to apply one of the two applications, public agency discount or prices reduction, concerning 140 pharmaceuticals.

While these developments are positive for the pharmaceutical industry they are not permanent solutions that reflect on the whole sector, our basic problems are still ongoing. No solution has been implemented towards the problem presented by exchange rates which threatens the sustainability of the industry.

As we have expressed before, the exchange rate for the Euro used in pharmaceutical pricing applications has been fixed at 1,9595 since April of 2009. Due to the difference between the fixed and current Euro values our industry has forwarded the 2.5 billion TL exchange rate discrepancy to the public up to now. In addition to this the most recent price reductions have added a new financial burden to our sector that exceeds 2 billion TL. Our pharmacies have seen up to 20% drops in their revenues. No regulation has been facilitated to allow pharmacies a reasonable period in which to dissolve their stocks in order to prevent losses due to retrospective stock differences and to enforce the price reductions after this period.

We are concerned that if a rational and sustainable solution is not found towards these issues the difficulties being experienced by our industry and pharmacists and the problems in the access to pharmaceuticals by patients will continue.