SMALL drugstores see their viability getting threatened by new congressional initiatives to increase the discounts to senior citizens to 30 percent and to accord the 20-percent discount privilege also to disabled persons.

Teodoro Ferrer, president and CEO of the Generika Drugstore chain and chapter officer of the Drugstores Association of the Philippines (DSAP), said small medicine retailers are now actually subsidizing the 20-percent discounts they are giving to elderly citizens because their profit margin for the branded medicines is only about 10 percent.

Luckily for small drugstores, Ferrer said the margins for the generic medicines are usually above 40 percent, allowing them to continue surviving.

However, if the discount is raised to 30 percent, Ferrer said there is a big possibility the small medicine retailers will no longer see the business as feasible, and will just eventually shut down, then look for other profitable ventures.

If this happens, Ferrer said, “My primary worry is the access of the people to affordable medicines will suffer.”

With the current 20-percent discount, the small stores, particularly those still heavily marketing branded medicines, are already hurting.

“Much more if the discount is raised to 30 percent,” he said.

Ferrer made it clear that they are not running away from their social responsibility.

But the burden should be spread also to the pharmaceutical firms, which are the ones that are really profiting heavily and not the small drugstores, he said.

Another legislation that the 1,800-member DSAP is closely watching, Ferrer said, is one extending the grant of discounts to disabled persons.

He said their worry is in the coverage of law. “Who will be considered disabled, because there is physical disability, mental, emotional, permanent, temporary and partial?”

The government, he said, must remember that in the end, social responsibility is still mainly the work of the state and it is wrong to just pass it on and make the private sector suffer.” 

Generika, which has 16 company-owned stores and 10 franchised outlets, is now focusing its efforts on expanding nationwide immediately through franchising in line with its vision of making affordable medicines accessible to every Filipino.

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