Algerian customs: Drug import bill up 28%

The bill of the Algerian imports of pharmaceutical products increased by 28% to reach $ 1.6 billion (USD) in the first eight months of 2014, against 1.27 billion USD in the same period of last year, the Algerian Customs told APS.
As for the total quantities of the imported pharmaceuticals, they were down 12.32% to 19,369 tones against 22,092 tones in the same period of comparison, say the provisional figures of the National Centre for Data Processing and Statistics of Customs (CNIS).
The increase in the import bill is due, primarily, to an increase of over 27% in imports of the medicinal products for human use, 32% for para-pharmaceutical products and 4% for drugs for use in veterinary medicine.
Thus, the imports of medicinal products for human use have reached $ 1.54 billion during the eight months of 2014, against $1.21 billion USD during the same period in 2013, an increase of 27.27%, said the CNIS.
The bill for medicines for human use dominates the total value of imports as it represented during the reference period, 95.6% of the total volume of Algeria’s pharmaceuticals purchases.