ANKARA: Turkey will guarantee the purchase of some medical products that international firms produce domestically, the health minister told Reuters this week, a strategy aimed at cutting reliance on imports and bringing in some $1.3 billion in new investment. The drive to source more drugs locally comes as the lira currency has hit a series of record lows, driving up the cost of imports. Turkey, expects that state spending on medicine will reach 24 billion lira ($6.4 billion) this year, with 60 percent of that on imports.
“We want production to be done locally,” Recep Akdag said in an interview on Monday. “We want generic medications to be produced in Turkey and bought by the state.” “With domestic production of medicine and medical instruments, we expect 5 billion lira ($1.3 billion) in investment,” he said, adding the program will prioritize the production of higher technology products. By producing 650 imported medical products domestically, Turkey could keep 2.69 billion lira at home, the Turkish Medication and Medical Instrument Institution estimates.
Some firms are already paying heed. Iran’s CinnaGen recently said it would invest in production for biotech medicine. France-based Servier has said it would localise the production for the Turkish market. Italian pharmaceutical firm Menarini has announced it would increase local capacity with a 15 million euro investment in its Turkish affiliate, Ibrahim Etem. The government also aims to increase the number of hospital beds in the national system to 150,000 from 120,000 now, Akdag said.
