Innovation essential for pharma sector growth

Delegates that took part at Portugal’s Pharmaceutical Industry Forum agreed that there are opportunities for Europe’s reindustrialisation and in the reconfiguration of supply chains.

However, the sector needs to invest in innovation and requires a favourable economic climate, starting in the area of clinical trials.
The conference heard how the Portuguese pharmaceutical sector has grown at a faster rate than the Portuguese economy as a whole, driven by exports which have more than doubled over the past decade.
Nevertheless, the sector still has room to grow when taking into account the share that it has of Portugal’s GDP compared to the sector’s ratio in other European countries and could benefit from the reindustrialisation of Europe and the reconfiguration of supply chains following the Covid-19 pandemic.
To this end more investment is needed in innovation, while the framework in which the activity is developed needs to be changed so that companies can become more competitive and the sector can attract investment according to the speakers who took part in the Portuguese Pharmaceutical Forum which was promoted by the newspaper Jornal Económico.
In the five-year period ending in 2020, the volume of business turned over by the Portuguese pharmaceutical sector increased 41% to almost €1.7Bn. Research did even better, growing 62%, and exports 73%.
If this sector is added to the healthcare sector, it would have amounted to 5.9% of GDP in 2020 according to data from Health Cluster.