New law will cut price of medicines

By Martin Hellicar

A NEW law that should lead to a reduction in the price of prescription medicines is in the pipeline, Health Minister Christos Solomis said yesterday.

The minister’s statements followed press reports suggesting drugs in Cyprus cost more than twice what they do in Greece and the rest of Europe.

“The Health Ministry is preparing new legislation on the regulation of trade in medicines based on the European norm,” Solomis said.

“The new legislation will permit, under certain circumstances, the parallel import of drugs, that is import of the same drug by more than one importer from any European Union country,” he said.

Solomis said parallel imports would create “competitive” conditions which would bring the price of medicines down.

But the minister also denied that local medicines were overpriced: “With the exception of some medicines, prices for drugs today, and especially of newer ones, are about the same at they are in Greece and other European countries.”

Import prices were set by the Drugs Price Control Committee to be no higher than the price offered by producers in the country of manufacture, the minister said.

Nicos Koutsou’s New Horizons party issued a statement wondering why the government had to wait for EU harmonisation before doing something about high drug prices.

The party charged the state with dragging its feet over changing the law so that it could continue “favouring” certain big drug importers.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.