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The link, therefore, between health, the economy and well-being in its broadest sense also translates into the value contribution of the pharmaceutical industry in modern societies: i) leadership in research and development of new drugs and vaccines that are critical to health care; ii) the industrial weight of a powerful sector in terms of production and generation of quality employment and high technology exports, and iii) the contribution to well-being not only through medicines, but also through the generation of innovation and knowledge, the fundamental basis of social growth today.
The strategic condition of the pharmaceutical industry that has been confirmed by the global pandemic is reflected in Spain, where the sector has played a relevant role in the fight against the crisis.
It has done so in research, with European leadership in clinical trials against the coronavirus, and other areas, such as production, where the response of drug manufacturing plants, together with logistics capacity, prevented essential drugs from being lacking in most critical moments.
Farmaindustria, on behalf of the innovative pharmaceutical companies, has been formulating different proposals to the Government on these bases since the beginning of the crisis, proposing the sector as one of those called to contribute to the economic reactivation and to reinforce the productive model of Spain for the future. Ten keys summarize why the pharmaceutical industry is a strategic sector for our country.
1. Pharmaceutical innovation increases life expectancy
Investment in innovative medicines is the main responsible for the increase in life expectancy of human beings. Thus, in the last 20 years there have been great achievements in medicine that have resulted in significant increases in average life expectancy. In the first decade of this century alone, 1.74 years of life were gained in developed countries, of which 73% can be directly attributed to the positive effect of new drugs on the health of the population.
2. Investment in healthcare generates economic growth
Investment in the health sector is, in addition to an effective instrument to redistribute income and bring citizens closer to real equality of opportunities, an instrument to generate wealth in a country. Thus, according to a report prepared by International Financial Analysts (Afi), an increase of two points over the GDP in investment in health would raise the Spanish GDP in the period 2025-2040 by 427,000 million euros, adding the increases of each year and regardless of the time value of money. On average, the GDP growth rate would increase by 0.25 percentage points during each of the years in this period, so that in 2040, GDP could be around 4% higher.
3. Pharmaceutical innovation saves resources for the health system
The cost savings brought about by pharmaceutical innovations outweigh the additional expense they entail, providing net savings to the health system and society. Different international studies conclude that the investment of one euro in medicines saves between 2 and 7 euros in other health benefits, from visits to the emergency room to surgical interventions.
Vaccines and medicines against Covid-19 are a clear example of how it is especially profitable to invest in the best available drugs.
4. We are a country of reference in conducting clinical trials with new drugs
Spain has positioned itself among the countries in the world with the best conditions for the development of clinical trials. These studies, in addition to being essential to achieve a new drug, are an opportunity to attract international investment to the health system and therefore to the country, but they are also an opportunity for patients and for society as a whole, since participation in a clinical trial may be the only way out for certain seriously ill patients, and it is a way of improving the quality of health care, given that the health professionals who participate in the research are at the forefront of science and can apply that knowledge in their care work.
Today, 60% of the investment in R&D made by pharmaceutical companies in Spain already corresponds to clinical research.
5. The pharmaceutical industry is the leader in R&D investment in Spain
The pharmaceutical industry is, together with the automotive industry, the leading industrial sector in investment in R&D: one in every five euros that the industry invests in R&D in Spain comes from the pharmaceutical industry.
This strong commitment of the companies and the position of international leadership in clinical trials generate an enormous growth opportunity for Spain in drug research. An adequate strategy that promotes the basic and preclinical phases of research, that promotes public-private collaboration, that generates the appropriate regulatory conditions and that also promotes access to new medicines, where our country moves away from the European reference countries, It would be key to developing these potentialities, and not only in terms of research, but also in terms of industrial capacity and generation of quality employment.
6. The pharmaceutical industry is the leading industrial sector in terms of productivity, only behind oil refining
The productivity of the pharmaceutical industry, measured as the value added per employee, is another of the great bastions of this sector. Between the periods 2009-2013 and 2014-2018, the productivity of the pharmaceutical industry grew by an average of 11.7%, and currently reaches 173,000 euros of gross value added per employee, more than double the average of the industrial sectors. In addition, the pharmaceutical sector is one of the most productive of all manufacturing industry sectors, only behind the coking and oil refining sectors, and surpassing sectors such as chemicals, aeronautics, metallurgical, paper and machinery.
7. The drug already accounts for 5% of Spanish exports
The pharmaceutical industry based in Spain has grown steadily in exports in recent years. In 2020 it broke its record, with 12,777 million euros in sales abroad, 5.6% higher than the previous year, which places the medicine as the fourth most exported product in the country. Pharmaceutical exports account for 22.3% of all high-tech exports, which makes this industry, along with aerospace, the most important sector in this field, and already accounts for 4.9% of total exports .
8. The pharmaceutical industry is a tractor sector in terms of economy and employment
The pharmaceutical industry today employs more than 210,000 people in Spain if direct, indirect and induced jobs are added. Direct employment reaches 44,068 employed persons, after registering an average annual growth of more than 2% during the last four years (2017-2021), despite the fact that the last two years have been strongly marked by the pandemic. In fact, in 2021 alone, the innovative pharmaceutical industry hired 5,756 people. Each direct job in the pharmaceutical industry generates up to four indirect or induced jobs, as confirmed by the report The value of medicine from a social perspective 2021, by the Weber Foundation.
From an industrial point of view, the sector in Spain has 82 production plants for medicines for human use, which annually produce more than 15,800 million euros. To these values must be added, as stated in the aforementioned report, that each euro invested in production in the pharmaceutical industry generates between one and two in other sectors.
9. Permanent employment in the pharmaceutical industry is close to 95%
Beyond the number, employment in the pharmaceutical industry is characterized by stability, as shown by the fact that 93.4% of contracts are permanent and only 1.0% of permanent employment works part-time, when the national average is 18.1%.
10. The pharmaceutical industry, at the forefront of equality and diversity
Equality and diversity are other great values inherent to employment in this sector: more than 53% of the people who work in the innovative pharmaceutical industry are women (the average for the national industry is 26%), a percentage that is rises to 67% in R&D departments. Specifically, the female workforce has grown in the last 4 years at an average annual rate of 2.8%. No other sector of the Spanish economy, except for Clothing (64.6%) and Health and Social Services (64.1%), exceeds 50% of female employment. This is reproduced in managerial positions, which has grown in recent years and where women already hold 45%. In addition, the greatest boost in employment is concentrated in the youngest and in those over 50 years of age, which are the groups that present highest unemployment rates in Spain.
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