Egypt now prices medicine by formula — tied to the pound, inflation, and interest rates. Last week regulators said no new increases have been approved yet. The industry says sales are up 13% while income fell by about a fifth. Doctor Islam Anan, CEO of Accsight, is back with us. Doctor Islam, welcome back.
Hello and happy to be on with you.
Expensive drugs can now be priced on value. Does Egypt have the data to do that well?
Value-based pricing depends on having good data. For cost items — hospitalisation rates, drug acquisition, doctor fees — we have it through the universal health insurance and the State Fund. For clinical outcomes, we still depend on multinational clinical trial data. What we are missing is epidemiology data for some diseases. Egypt is building that map, disease by disease. After a couple of years we expect to have good epidemiology data for the most strategic diseases.
Is the formula a floor or a ceiling?
It is a moving corridor — it can go up and it can go down. A trigger for a price increase — such as a 17% fall in the Egyptian pound — means prices can go up after a company submits a validated request to the EDA. But the EDA can also automatically lower prices without any application, once economic conditions improve. It is fair to manufacturers who were struggling when the dollar was 30 pounds and it is now more than 50 — and fair to the Egyptian population when the economy settles.
When sales are up but income is down — what does that tell investors?
Egypt manufactures only 9 to 10% of its local needs — 90% of manufacturing inputs are imported. When the dollar rises, costs go up the same day. But price increases come through three, six, or twelve months later. Companies got around a 35% increase in cost while price increases were only 10 to 20%. And companies are not increasing prices across their whole portfolio — many products are at a loss and they compensate with others.
What should investors watch by mid-2027?
Local manufacturing in Egypt is a strong opportunity — the EDA gives local manufacturers a shield for years against biosimilar and generic competition. And export — Egypt currently exports 1.5 billion USD in pharmaceuticals and expects to double that by 2030. If you open a large plant and aim for export as well as local manufacturing, that is a very strong position.
Doctor Islam, it is always a pleasure. Thank you.
My absolute pleasure. Thank you.
