WARMEST wishes for success to Generika Drugstore for its plan to expand to the country’s far-flung areas in the next few years. To this day large masses of our countrymen who live in areas remote from urban centers remain without access to medicines, much less to inexpensive drugs. The arrival of Generika in their communities will help solve life-and-death issues for them. Generic drugs are about 85 percent to 90 percent cheaper than branded drugs.
Generika Drugstore, to recall, is the third-largest player in the country’s pharmaceutical industry, one-half of which is now owned by Ayala Corp. The other players are Mercury Drug, the country’s top pharmaceutical firm, and Generics Pharmacy, the country’s largest generic-drugs retailer. With Ayala resources backing it up, Generika Drugstore is pursuing a five-year development plan that will add to its current network of more than 600 stores, 152 stores this year and an average of 100 more annually in the next few years.
The Philippines, as noted in this space earlier, has one of the highest price levels for medicines in the developing world. Drug prices in the Philippines are typically 10 times higher than in India and, by slightly lesser extent, than in Pakistan, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and other South and Southeast Asian countries. One reason for this state of affairs is that the pharmaceutical industry in the country is basically an oligopoly, whose members have become accustomed to invoking patent or intellectual-property rights to perpetuate their tight grip over the country’s pharmaceutical industry. The entry of an Ayala-led Generika Drugstore would help break this stranglehold and bring inexpensive medicines to poor communities.
As noted by Teodoro Ferrer, Generika president and chief executive officer, who owns the other half of Generika, some 12 years ago no one bought generic drugs. But through Generika’s constant education, the public was convinced that it was safe to take generic medicines. Now, even the largest drugstore, Mercury Drug, has changed its business model from exclusively selling branded products to selling generic drugs, as well.
The education of the public to the virtues of generic drugs may well be the most important of Generika’s contributions to public welfare in our country. It helps solve the public’s medical issues and income problem, as well.
Generika’s development plan, according to Ferrer, includes not just the increase of the number of its stores in the next five years but the expansion of the product line to include food supplements, health care and wellness products. It also includes building clinics and wellness centers in appropriate areas. Right now Generika is putting up retail clinics in the country’s major cities to cater to middle-class health-care consumers. Later, it may expand to other countries in Southeast Asia to take advantage of market opportunities that can be expected to open up in view of Asean’s economic integration. That plan is not a priority, however.
Generika Drugstore’s five-year development plan is responsive to the people’s needs. May it be rewarded with resounding success.
Image credits: Jimbo Albano