In 2010, a year in which very few industries grew substantially, new players entered the market and government intervention played a positive role in the industry. In particular pharmacies are working with government on the HIV counselling and testing campaign launched recently. The goal is to test 15 million South Africans for HIV by July 2011.
In 2011 government initiatives such as the growing demand for ARVs, and government projects such as tropical disease prevention, as well as the National Health Insurance scheme and other changes within the medical aid industry, are expected to drive growth.
In addition, large corporate players such as the Clicks Group are positioning themselves for growth through the expansion of their pharmacy network.
Challenges that continue to hamper the industry somewhat include growth in consumer revenue as the consumer battles to emerge from the recession, and the shortage of pharmacists in SA remain a challenge for the pharmaceutical industry. This is part of a worldwide trend and South Africa remains a recruiting country for pharmacists by large international companies.
Overall however Coface expects profitability to remain steady in 2011.
Coface's mission is to facilitate global business-to-business trade by offering its 130 000 customers four business lines to fully or partly outsource trade relationship management and to finance and protect their receivables: credit insurance, factoring, ratings and business information and receivables management. Thanks to the worldwide local service delivered by 6600 staff in 67 countries, over 45% of the world's 500 largest corporate groups are already customers of Coface.
Coface is a subsidiary of Natixis whose share capital (Tier 1) was €12,7 billion (about R124.5 billion) end December 2009.
For more information go to www.coface.com
