|
|
 |
|
Viewing report
|
|
|
|
Italy Pharmaceuticals and Healthcare Report Q4 2011
Business Monitor International, Sep 2011, Pages: 92
Business Monitor International's Italy Pharmaceuticals and Healthcare Report provides industry professionals and strategists, corporate analysts, pharmaceutical associations, government departments and regulatory bodies with independent forecasts and competitive intelligence on Italy's pharmaceuticals and healthcare industry.
BMI View: BMI believe the Italian government's decision to implement further austerity measures is a necessary and prudent course of action – Italy maintains one of the largest sovereign debt loads in the world and continues to receive negative attention from bond markets. However, its decision to further target the healthcare sector will not sit well with companies and patients.
Headline Expenditure Projections
- Pharmaceuticals: EUR19.48bn (US$25.84bn) in 2010 to EUR19.18bn (US$27.43bn) in 2011; -1.5% growth in local currency terms and +6.2% in US dollar terms.
- Healthcare: EUR147.71bn (US$195.93bn) in 2010 to EUR150.50bn (US$215.21bn) in 2011; 1.9% growth in local currency terms and 9.8% in US dollar terms.
- Medical devices: EUR5.86bn (US$7.49bn) in 2010 to EUR5.95bn (US$8.51bn) in 2011; 1.5% growth in local currency terms and 13.6% in US dollar terms.
Business Environment Rating: In BMIs Pharmaceuticals & Healthcare Business Environment Ratings (BERs) for Q411, Italy again ranks tenth of the ten markets surveyed. Despite being a large market, Italy is characterised by low levels of annual growth, largely as a result of widespread price cuts. Additionally, the Italian economy is one of the most vulnerable economies in an already shaky eurozone. High levels of public debt, poor infrastructure and a lack of competitiveness indicate that the country will remain one of the region's underperformers over our forecast period. Nevertheless, opportunities for innovative drugmakers are still reasonable, given the recent inclusion of orphan medicines on the reimbursement list, despite the market access barriers now facing novel drugs.
Key Trends & Developments
- On July 15 2011, the lower house of Italy's parliament approved an austerity budget worth over EUR70bn (US$100bn). The package, seen as crucial to keeping the eurozone's third largest economy afloat, contained a mix of spending cuts and tax measures, aimed at balancing the budget and reducing Italy's elevated debt levels by 2014.The government initially approved a EUR47bn (US$67bn) budget, but then deemed it insufficient to protect Italy from the risk of a debt crisis. The government aims to make savings of at least EUR2.5bn (US$3.6bn) in 2013 and EUR5bn (US$7.2bn) in 2014 through the implementation of cost-containment activities within the healthcare sector.
- Italian drugmaker Recordati registered strong financial results for H111. The drugmaker's sales increased by 6.6% year-on-year (y-o-y) to EUR401mn (US$575.59mn) in the period. Net income reached EUR62.4mn (US$89.56mn), up 5.3% y-o-y, while the company's pharmaceutical sales grew 6.1% y-o-y to EUR385.5mn (US$553.24mn).
BMI Economic View: The Italian economy continues to underperform compared to its regional peers, echoing its laggard status during the credit boom years. While this is in part because of the large degree of slack in the economy and wider reaching concerns about the political crisis, there are also deep structural issues at play, such as the previous erosion in productivity and overvalued real effective exchange rate. As a result BMI have revised down their medium-term growth forecasts to reflect these impediments.
BMI Political View: Having been rocked by their leader's sex scandal and corruption trials, the Italian government has been dealt a further blow by crushing defeats in local elections and four key referendums. BMI continue to believe that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's time in frontline politics is drawing to a close, and warn that junior coalition partner, the Northern League, could yet decide to pull out of government in a bid to force early elections.
|
|
|
|
