“First place in the world for export growth between 2021 and 2023. This is the goal achieved by the pharmaceutical industry in Italy thanks to international and national companies that continue to invest in the country”. This is what he says Marcello Cattanipresident of Pharmaindustriaduring the assembly today in Rome at the Auditorium della Conciliazione. “It is exports that drive production and that set record after record. Medicines and vaccines are the second ‘made in Italy’ sector in terms of foreign balance, 17 billion euros in 2023. The share of pharmaceutical exports on total manufacturing has gone from 3.8% to 8.3% in 20 years”, recalled the president, reconfirmed in the role for the two-year period 2024-26. Cattani was reconfirmed at the helm of Farmindustria.
The industry of Pharma confirms that it is a strategic hi-tech sector for the nation. “The production – Cattani underlines – reached 52 billion euros in 2023 and over 49 in exportsdespite the difficulties caused by the 30% increase in costs compared to 2021. Investments in the territory amounted to 3.6 billion, of which 2 in research and development. There are 70,000 employees (+2% in 2023 and +9% in 5 years), with an increase of almost 20% of under 35s in the last 5 years and with a high presence of women, 45% of the total”. Without forgetting that in the last 5 years “pharmaceutical patent applications in the country have increased by 35%, compared to +23% of the ‘big EU'”.
Industry that, the president continues, has a “cutting-edge corporate welfare and is the first sector among manufacturing ones, according to Istat, for competitiveness, with the highest added value per employee, a productivity parameter for which we are better than the other big EU. And that looks to the future with social responsibility projects, also with school-work alternation, in high schools and in ITS, to train students and develop the skills necessary for businesses. Precisely with this objective – Cattani recalls – a memorandum of understanding was recently signed with Egypt, within the Mattei Plan, for partnerships between businesses and training, through academic and professional exchanges of teachers and students”.
“At the beginning of 2024, a historic record was reached for drugs in development in the world, 23,000, with investments in research and development by pharmaceutical companies of over 1,700 billion dollars between 2023 and 2028. But global competition is increasingly fast. This is why being fast, attracting investments and offering innovation must become the must of the policies of the European Union and Italy. We cannot have a two-speed reality: a world that is changing very rapidly and decision-making and regulatory structures that are stuck twenty years ago. We need to turn the page to keep up with other countries in an increasingly complex global context. In Italy, a truly modern pharmaceutical governance is essential, with new, clear rules, suited to the speed of innovation, overcoming the ‘payback’ system, an unfair and additional tax that weighs on companies for almost 2 billion in 2024“, asks Cattani.
“Reforms to be accompanied – he adds – by a simplification for clinical research and rules to allow the use of clinical data for research needs, respecting privacy. It is also essential – warns the president – to reduce the time for citizens to access innovation, which is still too long (14 months at a national level, further aggravated by those at a regional level), with evident differences across the territory, which generate inequality and inhomogeneity”. According to Cattani, “it is necessary to recognize the value of innovation and revalue some widely used and low-cost drugs, to thus guarantee industrial sustainability that is in difficulty due to a structural increase in costs. With financing based on real health needs”.
“On Europe and Italy – observes the number one of Farmindustria – the action of the Government is very positive, as it has shown that it believes in innovation. We must continue the dialogue between institutions and industry, collaborating with a view to a shared vision of the national interest. Because only together is it possible to win in Europe and in the world”.
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