Financial Crises Hits Pharmaceutical Industry

Financial Crises has hit the manufacturer of the medicines considerably, many of the pharmaceutical giants have declined the new job recruitments that they were making every year. In comparison to the last year, the business of the pharmaceutical giants is decreased by the 31%. Pfizer the pharmaceutical leader that manufactures the world’s best selling drug, Viagra, has also been hit by the economical recession. Last year the sale of Viagra was lowered by about 53% because of its very high costs and the generic drugs manufacturer selling it at a very low cost. Even the drugs that were selling like the hot cakes in the pharmaceutical market are now feeling the less demand from the customers. The pharmaceutical companies are even cutting down their employee strength by either removing the trainee employees or by reducing the salaries of the permanent employees. The recruitment done by the pharmaceutical industries in the last year is only 3%, very less in comparison to the recruitment done in previous years.

Even the other pharmaceutical giants like Merck and Sonafi Aventis has declared that they will not be doing any new recruitments for the next year and no bonuses will be given to the employees. They have even declared that the sales executive who will not be able to achieve their targets will be given a pink slip the next month. No employee in the company will be given the benefits of the performance incentives and also the unnecessary expenses done by the company to promote the products will be cut down. Even the lot of money spend on the packaging and distribution of the products is tried to be cut down. The promotional campaigns are also been shut down in order to cope up with the current economical crises. Even the cuts in the salaries of the employees have been done by some pharmaceutical companies in order to save the money.

The companies manufacturing the branded drugs are facing a lot of competition from the generic drugs manufacturers and thus this competition is one major reason why pharmaceutical industries manufacturing branded drugs are facing the heat of the financial recession. Generic drugs are the exact replicas of the branded drugs and shows the same effectiveness, additionally, they are available at a very low costs than the branded drugs. This phenomenon of best quality available at lower price has helped remarkably to increase the sale of generic drugs, and thus has decreased the sale of the branded drugs. The sale of the generic drugs is increasing and the sale of the branded drugs is decreasing because of the exceptional high costs kept by the branded drugs manufacturers.

The government policy to promote the generic drugs has made consumer aware of the low cost medicines and thus are going only for them. This has affected the sale of the branded drugs manufacturer. The government has also reduced the taxes on the generic drugs in order to promote the generic drugs. Thus, the sale of the branded drugs is affected considerably due to the ever increasing demand of the generic drugs. The pharmaceutical giants thus has to eliminate discretionary spending, overtime, and temporary workers to match up with the prices of the generic drugs. Cost cutting is only way through which pharmaceutical giants can cope with the recession factor. Many of the pharmaceutical companies have even asked the drug distributors to reduce their profit range in order to keep the prices of the drugs low.

In the European countries, branded drugs were the only drugs that were sold and no one was purchasing the generic drugs still the last year, but because of the financial crises and lot of publicity from the generic drugs manufacturers, the increase in the sale of generic drugs and decrease in the sale of the branded drugs is noted. But, the main concern for everybody is that even the generic drugs sale in not up to the mark because consumer is not pertaining to the buy more medicines. This the decline is observed in the entire world in the sale of the medicines and thus the financial crises are making the condition are hitting the pharmaceutical industry badly.