Leading medications sold in Argentina 2020, by units

As of November 2020, Levothyroxine, a drug used to treat hypothyroidism, manufactured by the laboratory Montpellier, ranked first among the leading medicines sold in Argentina, reaching over 10.3 million units sold. The drug Ibuprofen 600 produced by the local subsidiary of the German multinational pharmaceutical company Bayer followed, with nearly nine million units delivered in the South American country. By that year, pharmaceutical expenditure amounted to around 182 U.S. dollars per capita in Argentina.

The third largest pharmaceutical market in Latin America

  Despite facing high levels of inflation that put pressure on businesses and individuals, Argentina had a sound pharmaceutical sector with approximately 354 laboratories, 229 manufacturing facilities, and about 163 thousand direct and indirect employees. Moreover, Argentina is the third largest pharmaceutical market in Latin America and the Caribbean, only after Brazil and Mexico, with an estimated value of around six billion U.S. dollars as of 2021.

Pharmaceutical trade deficit

  The Argentinean pharmaceutical sector relies to a large extent on imports, reaching its highest trade deficit in pharmaceutical products in 2021, amounting to nearly 2.42 billion U.S. dollars. Moreover, the import value of pharmaceuticals to Argentina totaled around 3.29 billion U.S dollars in 2021, with the United States and China making up nearly one-third of the total pharma imports to the South American country, while Brazil and Uruguay were the main destinations of exports of pharmaceutical products from Argentina that year.