Audit Chamber of Kazakhstan reveals weak domestic drug production, heavy reliance on importsKazakhstan has developed only two types of medicines over the past decade, while 84% of its medical market relies on imported products, according to the Supreme Audit Chamber."Two audits conducted in 2024 and 2025 revealed a number of problems and flaws in the country’s pharmaceutical sector at every level: from research and production to regulation and distribution of medicines," Alihan Smailov, chairman of the Supreme Audit Chamber, said at a Wednesday session of the Majilis, the lower house of parliament.Kazakhstan’s pharmaceutical market was valued at 1.2 trillion tenge in 2024, yet only 16% of it consists of locally made medicines. Despite 58 billion tenge invested in medical research between 2022 and 2024, the country lacks a formal system for registering biomedical studies or a register of clinical sites, according to Smailov."Scientific outcomes remain alarmingly low. Only two original domestic drugs have been developed in the past 10 years, and one of them, despite costing over 4 billion tenge to develop, hasn’t been even included in the national medicine register," Smailov said.The government has allocated 148 billion tenge worth of benefits for the pharmaceutical industry over the past three years. The centralized distributor [SK-Pharmacy LLP] has signed long-term contracts with local manufacturers, guaranteeing purchases for a period of up to ten years. The value of such contracts grew from 69 billion tenge to 112 billion tenge over five years, according to the head of the Supreme Audit Chamber.Yet, the range of medicines supplied by Kazakh producers has nearly halved: from 968 to 507 types of medications, he added. (ICE ALMATY)

Fonte notizia: INTERFAX