Statistics

Even in times of crisis, the pharmaceutical industry is stable. Apart from the significant innovative power of the pharmaceutical companies, this is due to the medical needs of society. With a gross added value of more than EUR 100,000 per employee, the pharmaceutical industry provides a significant asset for Germany’s national economy: Hardly any other industry provides such a high gross added value. The pharmaceutical sector is considered one of the industry branches with the best future prospects. The production of pharmaceutical products in Germany continued to increase in 2008, with more than half of all products still being exported. The number of employees in research and development also continued to rise despite a slight decrease in overall employment. This demonstrates the great potential of Germany as a research location, and the companies continue to invest: With capital spending worth EUR 1.53 billion for new production and research facilities, the pharmaceutical industry achieved another peak value in 2008.
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Research and development expenditures reached a new high in 2008: EUR 4.84 billion were invested in the research and testing of innovative pharmaceuticals. Once again, 31 new molecular entities were launched, some of which represent the first therapeutic options for serious diseases. Development continues: A total of 442 new projects of our member companies have the chance of obtaining marketing authorization by 2013. The focus of the projects is on cancer, but intensive research is also being conducted in the fields of infection, inflammatory diseases and geriatric disorders such as Alzheimer's dementia. No other industry performs as much research as the research-based pharmaceutical industry: In a comparison of all industries conducting R&D, the intensity of the vfa member companies is three times as great and the number of employees twice as high.
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Thanks also to new pharmaceuticals, people in Germany are living longer and longer. Health care expenditures as a share of gross domestic product remains stable at just below 11 percent and is therefore in the upper medium range when compared internationally. The share of expenses for pharmaceuticals also remains constant at under two percent of the gross domestic product, even though more and more people depend on pharmaceuticals with increasing age. The share of pharmaceutical expenditures in overall health care spending has remained unchanged at 15 percent for years.
Germany ranks in the middle segment in Europe in this respect as well. This shows that pharmaceutical expenses are predominantly controlled by the growing demand and do not represent a risk for the overall financing of the German health care system.
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Over the past eight years, sales in the global pharmaceutical market have more than doubled. The United States is still in the lead, reaching the highest per-capita sales in the market as well. In Germany, pharmaceutical spending is only about half as high. In Germany, legal regulations still prevent patients from benefiting quickly and sufficiently from pharmaceutical innovations after their marketing authorization: In 2007, only six percent of pharmaceutical expenditures were made for innovative pharmaceuticals launched during the past five years. This brings Germany to the bottom of the table in Europe. The dominant factor in the dynamics of the pharmaceutical market continues to be medical and therapeutic needs: Not only were increases recorded for serious and life-threatening diseases such as cancer, rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis but also for widespread conditions such as cardiovascular diseases or diabetes as well as in preventive medicine with the first vaccine against one type of cancer, the human papillomavirus (the trigger of cervical cancer).
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