Assessing the Impact of Import Restriction on Sales of Domestic Pharmaceutical Products

The policy of the Ministry of Health is to save currency and support the domestic health and pharmaceutical industry by restricting and even prohibiting the import of medicines that are similar to domestic products. However, some pharmaceutical companies, doctors, and patients demand imported medicines. The purpose of this study was to investigate the efficiency and impact of the import restriction policy on Iran’s pharmaceutical industry. This study tried to determine whether the policy could have affected the sales for domestic pharmaceuticals.

This applied, descriptive survey was conducted in two quantitative and qualitative phases. In the quantitative phase, the sales for imported medicines and domestic products before and after implementing the policy were determined between 2012 and 2018. In the qualitative phase, the views of six experts and policy-makers of the Food and Drug Administration and six managers of pharmaceutical companies were assessed and analyzed through semi-structured interviews.

Based on the quantitative and qualitative data and the analysis of medicines with import restrictions in each drug group, it was shown that the sales for domestic pharmaceutical products increased due to the policy. However, in products such as thalassemia medicines, due to the support by the Special Diseases Association, we did not observe this increased sale.

Increasing restrictions on medicine import and even prohibition cannot be considered a good policy in practice and would lead to the spread of domestic economic imbalances, monopolies, smuggling, and economic corruption.