Puerto Rico Pharmaceuticals and Healthcare Report Q4 2009

Puerto Rico's pharmaceutical market is showing sizeable growth in nominal terms (11.6% year-on-year (y-o-y) in 2009), but high inflation in the economy will erode many of these gains. BMI expects the Puerto Rican drug market to increase from US$2.9bn in 2008 to US$4.086bn by 2013, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.14% in US dollar terms. However, with the economy stagnating, BMI forecasts that the drug market will begin to contract in real terms by 2013. However, the island still takes second place in BMI's Business Environment Ratings for the Americas region, due to its high-levels of per-capita spending and world-class regulatory and intellectual property (IP) regime.

The major risk to our pharmaceutical forecasts regards developments in federal healthcare funding under President Obama's administration. On one hand there are fears that in a bid to provide universal medical insurance coverage, funding may be withdrawn from Medicare Advantage (MA) funds ??