Russia favors domestic pharma with $3.9B

Russia has been rumbling at global pharma for awhile, but Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has sharpened his warnings to foreign drugmakers.

Russia has been rumbling at global pharma for awhile, but Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has sharpened his warnings to foreign drugmakers. If you want to capture part of his country's market, be prepared to manufacture your products locally and transfer your know-how to Russian drugmakers, too.

It's all part of Putin's plan to build up the Russian drug industry. The prime minister is now promising to invest 120 billion roubles ($3.9 billion) into domestic pharma and medical devices, industries he's designated as priorities for growth. And he's setting market-share targets for Russian pharma, too: By 2020, he wants local drugmakers to be producing 90 percent of medicines deemed "essential" by the government.

"The simple way is to show that there will be restrictions for them in the Russian market if they do not launch production and transfer technology," Putin said during a cabinet meeting on the drug sector, according to Reuters. He drew an analogy with the car bu