Iran is counted as a big market in the Region, with around 80 million population with a wide healthcare coverage. Iran has a very fast growing health and medicine science and 96% of the used medicament is produced in Iran. which means only 4% of it is being imported. Meanwhile, the value of the local and imported products are shown in the chart below:

In an effort to strengthen the local market, Iran has been trying to attract new markets and introduce Iran pharmaceutical market to the world. Here is the information to Iran Medicaments’ export ( mostly herbal medicaments) destinations and their share:

Several German delegations have visited Iran in year 2016,as both Iran and germany are interested to  in the pharmaceutical industry. And as of June, Iran and Russia are in talks to speed up scientific cooperation between the countries and have agreed to cooperate on about 40 scientific projects.

Germany and Russia are the two highest pharmaceutical export destinations for Iran — together they receive over 75% of Iran’s exports, so the ties between the countries are strong.

Totally, Iran medicament market consists of neighbour countries as well. The market value in 2014 was reported to be around 2.35 billion USD, and is estimated to be at 3.13 billion USD by year 2019.

Iran is the 2nd largest consumer per capita of Medicaments in Asia (with average rate of 340 medicine units per year).

There are 15 local companies that are the key player of the industry with a net profit of more than 4 Million Dollars. The top 5 companies profit more than  20 million US dollars a year.

Main threats and opportunities:

The most recent changes in Iran’s international face, after the removal of sanctions, has helped Iran to grow both in international finance and business sector, and it is one of the main opportunities of Iran medicament Industry.

We can also name some other opportunities such as:

• Potential to collaborate on joint projects with key international players  

• The new local health care system being a number one priority of the country  

• Countries KPI’s improvement based on international reports  

• Special attention of the government to health care

• Competitive price of the local products  

The main threats of the industry, are:

• Competitive and strict market in Iran  

• Being dependent on the imports of raw materials  

• High interest rate  

• Difficulty of importing / transferring high technology to the local market  

• The presence of the black / shadow market in Iran  

• Increase in the number of drugstores (overcapacity in distribution network)