Johannesburg – South Africa’s pharmaceutical exports will grow nearly 5% in local currency terms to reach R7.4-billion by 2025, and it will remain a key supplier of pharmaceutical products to regional peers, according to a report by Fitch Solutions.
The entity, which is a subsidiary of Fitch Ratings, said Biovac Institute’s new deal to manufacture the BioNTech-Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine in South Africa would boost local production.
It was announced on July 21 that the Biovac Institute, a bio-pharmaceutical company based in Cape Town, had partnered with Pfizer and BioNTech to help manufacture and distribute vaccine doses for the African Union.
Production will begin towards the second half of 2022, with maximum output of about 100-million doses a year aimed by early 2023. “We believe that this will significantly boost local production of vaccines in South Africa and further strengthen the local industry, which is already an outperformer in the region,” Fitch said in a research note.
“We currently project that South Africa’s pharmaceutical exports will grow by 4.8% in local currency terms and 2.6% in US dollar terms to reach R7.4-billion by 2025, and it will remain a key supplier of pharmaceutical products to regional peers.”
The global pharmaceutical market is worth $300-billion (R4.4bn) a year. North America, South America, Europe and Japan account for 85% of the global pharmaceuticals market. The South African pharmaceutical sector is the largest drug market in Africa, with the fifth-highest expenditure on pharmaceuticals per capita.
The report highlighted that although progress was being made to increase access of vaccines in SA, Covid-19 vaccine progress in the region would continue to lag behind developed nations.
“A significant number of countries across the region are unlikely to vaccinate priority groups prior to December 2022.
“Limited stocks and supply bottlenecks continue to hinder vaccination, and at the time of writing, we highlight that less than 2% of the African population have been vaccinated.”
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