A series of active meetings will be launched for the regulation of the pharmaceuticals market, inter alia with sector partakers, Irakli Garibashvili, Prime Minister of Georgia announced at a meeting with Irakli Lekvinadze, Chairman of the National Agency of Competition today.

The meeting focused on the Interim Report of the Pharmaceutical Market Study produced by the National Agency of Competition. According to the Head of the government, this topic should be made most transparent.

“I reviewed the Interim Report of the Pharmaceutical Market Study, which you produced. It is truly interesting. So, let us start work. I wish to make this topic most transparent. Let us start a dialogue with stakeholders – the key players. Also, I plan to have active work performed within the format of the Economic Council to address this topic” noted the Prime Minister of Georgia.

As noted by the Head of the government, the price of medication is a genuine concern of the population and society has questions. That is why it is essential to scrutinize the issue and this process should be most transparent. With this aim, a series of active meetings will be held to have a close dialogue with stakeholders to make sure no question is left unanswered.

As the Chairman of the National Agency of Competition noted, the Interim Report on Pharmaceutical Market Study includes recommendations on enabling more competition at the pharmaceutical market and greater access of customers on medication.

“We have presented the key findings and our Interim Report covers a period of 2016-2020. Thus a set of recommendations are based on the analysis we conducted in two directions. The first one implies ways to reduce the high concentration on the market and impact of the existing holding structure by neutralizing them to enable greater competition and more informed choices to be made by customers through saving more in the conditions of the best choice when spending on medication is quite high.

The second direction of our recommendations involves the systemic issues, including the legislative amendments with the following aims and goals: primarily, we advise the prescription policy to be adjusted. It needs to be digitalized and more choices need to be offered within the prescription policy as customers need to have information and choices on the medication available at the market. Thus, we stand ready to publicly disseminate the Interim Report to all the interested parties and present the set of recommendations which will ultimately be designed to make the market more competitive, which will affect the prices of medication in a certain period of time. Primarily, the key aspect here is to make the customers have more informed choices” noted Irakli Lekvinadze.