The Pharmaceutical Market: Lithuania

In recent years, Lithuania has made a degree of economic progress, albeit hampered by political uncertainty and a series of weak governments. Despite the current economic turmoil that is unfolding globally, Lithuania is not expected to enter a recession. Economic growth will slow substantially, however; the Economist Intelligence Unit expects real growth to fall to 0.2% in 2009 and rise to just 0.8% in 2010.

One key aim of successive governments has been to reorient the country's political and economic structure away from the former USSR, and towards Western Europe. The success of this policy is clear; Lithuania is one of the ten countries that joined the European Union in 2004. In October 2008, the anti-Russian Homeland Union party won the parliamentary election.

The Lithuanian pharmaceutical market is small and predominantly supplied by overseas manufacturers; there is only a small local production sector, which still tends to concentrate on exports to the former USSR. However, Sanitas, the largest domestic pharmaceutical manufacturer, has seen large increases in sales and gained access to European markets such as Poland and Slovakia due to recent acquisitions.