Research and Markets(http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/1ef2a4/malaysia_pharmaceu) has announced the addition of the "Malaysia Pharmaceuticals and Healthcare Report Q4 2009" report to their offering.
The Malaysia 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 Malaysia's pharmaceuticals and healthcare industry.
In the Business Environment Rating (BER) matrix for Q409, Malaysia considerably improved its position in the Asia Pacific matrix, and is now ranked fifth out of the 15 key regional markets. Key attractions of the Malaysian pharmaceutical market are the government's encouragement of the biotechnology sector and the forecast steady annual growth in its pharmaceutical market. On the other hand, per-capita pharmaceutical consumption is quite low, especially due to high out-of-pocket payment levels, which make the market vulnerable to the current economic crisis. Nevertheless, we forecast that the market will post a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.65% in local currency terms, rising - at consumer prices - from MYR4.12bn (US$1.22bn) in 2008 to MYR5.96bn (US$1.96bn) in 2013.
Boosted by considerable encouragement from the government, the generic sector will gain in terms of volume, although generics will only gain a small percentage of the total market due to their competitive prices. Patent expirations will have a considerable impact on the performance of the generic sector in the coming years. In August 2009, Indian Ranbaxy launched cardiovascular treatment Covance (losartan), which will be manufactured locally. Given the low cost of the product and the unmet medical need, the author expects prescribers' uptake of the drug to be rapid.
In addition to cannibalising sales of the originator product - Merck & Co's Cozaar - Covance will gain market share at the expense of Diovan (valsartan), Aprovel (irbesartan) and Micardis (telmisartan).