OREANDA-NEWS. December 15, 2010. Belarus’ pharmaceutical industry will get USD 1 billion worth of investments in 2011-2015, Prime Minister of Belarus Sergei Sidorsky said when visiting the Minskintercaps company.

Sergei Sidorsky stressed that the pharmaceutics development program up to 2015 is now being drafted. According to the document, by 2015 the share of Belarusian medicines in the domestic market will reach at least 50%. To date the share is 23%.

According to the Prime Minister, “pharmaceutical market will become more competitive.” For example, Russia has designed a very strong program of development of this industry.

In this respect Belarusian pharmaceutics will get more investments. “We will provide USD 1 billion for the pharmaceutical industry,” Sergei Sidorsky said. He stressed that within five years a number of new import-substituting enterprises will be built in Belarus.

The pharmaceutical industry has good development prospects, the Prime Minister believes. “We should go forward by leaps and bounds,” he said. Sergei Sidorsky said that foreign investors are interested in Belarus.”

The Prime Minister instructed to study the possibility of creation in Belarus biograd producing pharmaceuticals.

“You can create a biograd or a bio-park involving 5 or 7 foreign companies,” Sergei Sidorsky said when addressing the company’s personnel.

According to Sergei Sidorsky, the biograd project will unite the companies by “common idea, common state support and common logistics.” The Prime Minister instructed to study the foreign experience in creating biograds, and also to look into the issues of training personnel of appropriate qualifications.

During the next week the Prime Minister will be submitted proposals for improving the conditions for investment in the pharmaceutical industry. The terms that particular companies might be interested in will be thoroughly examined within a month.

The biograd project is important for the country as it will attract new technologies, create new jobs, promote the production of import-substituting products, said Nikolai Zemskov, director for business development in the CIS, Vita Pharma.

“In fact, everything is in place to create such biograd in Belarus. We only need to hold negotiation on investment,” Nikolai Zemskov said.

Belarusian Minskintercaps and the Slovak company Vita Pharma have launched a USD 46 million project to produce pharmaceuticals, Nikolai Zemskov told.

There are plans to establish the production of newest medicines at reasonable prices for the Belarusian market. The new facility will produce 45 new medicines.

All this will make Belarus more independent from foreign medicines and raise its export capacity. The main areas of import substitution will become oncology, oncohematology, transplantology, HIV, AIDS, hematology, immunology, etc.