Macedonians for decades have been joking that while some countries have mafia, the mafia in Macedonia has its own country.
If you look at how the pharmaceutical companies function in Macedonia, the above statement rings true. MINAReport has spent several weeks to talk with staffers employed at both private pharmaceutical companies and the Agency for Medicine and Medical Devices. What we found explains why Macedonians pay double and triple for any medication, including vitamins compared to their neighboring countries.
It’s a racket.
If you want to start a pharmaceutical company and start importing/selling medicine, as a company you need to register every medicine with the Agency and pay a fee of 2,500 euros/medication. If you’d like to sell Tylenol and Ibuprofen you’d need to give the Agency 5,000 euros. If you’d like to sell 50 different medications, you’d need to pay the Agency 125,000 euros. There is a catch, this massive fee is renewed every three years, so if you’d like to keep selling those 50 products, you would shell out another 125,000 euros. As a result, only mega monopolies like Zegin can afford such fees thus completely stifling competition. Because of the crazy fees per medication, the mark ups on each medication is huge so the companies can first recoup their money back from all the fees and then make a profit on top of it. As an example, purchasing 20 tablets of Magnesium in Macedonia will cost you $8. You can get almost 8-9 times the amount of tablets for the same price in most western nations.
If you’d like to manufacture your own medications, for example something as simple as aspirin, you can forget it, the bureaucratic red tape is absolutely insane. I don’t think Brystol Myers will get a license to operate in Macedonia – once again the idea so to limit competition.
So if you are going to visit Macedonia, make sure you bring your own vitamins and medications.
