According to Dmitry Vakhrukov, Deputy Minister of Economic Development of Russia, residents of St. Petersburg Special Economic Zone (SEZ) are making increasing efforts at providing import substitution in the pharma industry.
“By the end of 2021, the total volume of supply from pharmaceutical companies of St. Petersburg SEZ amounted to more than 119 million packages. As of September 2022, the y-o-y increase has already reached 16%. We are witnessing the inflow of high-tech domestic products to technological niches vacated by companies from unfriendly countries. The SEZ regime contributes to the intensity of these processes,” TASS quotes the deputy minister фы ыфнштп.
According to him, in the first six months of this year, the actual total investment volume of the residents of St. Petersburg SEZ amounted to 78.7 billion rubles, which is 5 billion higher than over last year.
“The growth was supported by investments of the residents in operating enterprises, primarily pharmaceutical companies. These include Biocad, Pharmasyntez, and Vertex,” Vakhrukov said.
St. Petersburg SEZ is featuring a largest pharmaceutical cluster where the total investment of residents producing medicines is more than 62 billion rubles, the deputy head of the Ministry of Economic Development stressed. Some of the participants are Cytomed and Novartis Neva. The companies have created more than 4,000 jobs, and more than 149 million drugs have been put on the market.
The city government is expanding the set of tools that help enterprises create full-cycle production based on unique developments, said Aleksandr Beglov, Governor of St. Petersburg. It is planned to conclude the first offset contract in pharma sector. According to its terms, within the first three years the winner of the competitive procedure will create a new full-cycle pharmaceutical production facility in St. Petersburg to manufacture 31 names of drugs, mainly for cancer patients.
“The successful development of the pharmaceutical cluster in the special economic zone shows that St. Petersburg has chosen the right course to support high-tech enterprises that have a high share of their own developments. This is the key to the stable development of enterprises and the competitiveness of products in foreign markets,” Beglov said.
