STABILITY, CONSUMER POWER TO BOOST LATIN AMERICAN SALES

Industry sources in Mexico have argued strongly for investment in the pharmaceuticals sector, claiming that Latin America's improving economic stability and technological development is set to drive strong growth.

According to the latest surveys, Latin America's pharmaceuticals market was worth US$19bn in 2004, equivalent to just 4% of world sales. However, the data suggests the region's drug sales grew faster than anywhere else, at 13%. A key growth area was generics, which local sources in Mexico claim are at last beginning to displace non-bioequivalent copies, or so-called "similares," in the growth rankings. This has been largely due to a series of extremely positive recent market reforms.

Other industry sources also claim that new marketing tools and information technology are set to boost drug sales. As there is a dearth of adequate consumer information about many pharmaceuticals, but costs must remain necessarily low, new lower-cost sales techniques are gaining ground. For drugmakers, the internet carries the lowest costs, at just US$1 per contact. However, in the absence of high internet take-up, call centres are effectively replacing personal visits by sales representatives. The centres cost ten times less per contact than visits, at some MXN50 (US$4.65).