Oligopolistic pharmaceutical market
Obvious signs of secret deals and corruption in Georgian pharmaceutical business.
By Eliso Djanashia and Studio Monitor.
In 2008 Georgia’s annual inflation rate was at 5.5 %. In light of global and post war crisis prices on products and household goods in Georgia went neither down, nor up. Medicaments were the only exception. In separate cases prices for most commonly used medicaments rose by 200% over the last year and not surprisingly so, over 80% of medicaments import and 70% of the drug stores are controlled by two pharmaceutical companies that instead of competing are in practice cooperating with each other to keep prices on medicaments unnaturally high. Owner of one of the companies is a member of a Parliamentary Health Committee using his position to effectively block other players on the retail market from licensing to sell drugs in their stores.
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To read it in Georgian, please click here.
This investigation was supported by Danish network SCOOP.
