Morocco’s Competition Council has urged the government to proceed methodically with a draft decree overhauling the pricing of pharmaceutical products, according to L’Economiste daily. The regulator calls for firm legal foundations and a rigorous prior assessment of its economic effects.
Authorities are pursuing two aims: broadening access to treatment and safeguarding the financial sustainability of compulsory health insurance. The draft would set generic prices progressively, according to their order of market entry, the price bracket of the reference product and their place of manufacture. It would scrap the 10% mark-up historically applied to imported medicines and allow negotiated rebates for treatments with heavy budgetary weight.
The Council recommends a comprehensive, documented impact study before implementation, to assess the current system and anticipate risks for the whole sector. It also addresses supply continuity: the draft contains exceptional measures to guarantee the availability of essential medicines, and the Council wants their trigger conditions spelled out and tied explicitly to the Code of Medicines and Pharmacy, to avoid redundancy or legal uncertainty.
L’Economiste reports that the measures’ effectiveness depends on strengthening the Moroccan Agency for Medicines and Health Products, which needs sufficient human, technical and analytical resources to monitor stocks proactively. The Council also warns that piling amendments onto the original text would create weaknesses, and advocates a new, consolidated decree with harmonized Arabic and French versions, leaving negotiation and rebate mechanisms to separate regulatory frameworks.
Success, the Council stresses, will hinge on managing the transition. It calls for a detailed, even-handed timetable covering all medicines, an alert and review mechanism, and close consultation with manufacturers and pharmacists. The regulator seeks to reconcile control of health spending with the market’s economic balance.
