Drug imports hit $6.5bn as Brazil pharma deficit widens

The boom in weight-loss drugs, limits on the local industry’s ability to innovate, an aging population and the supply of medicines by the public health system are among the main factors driving an increase of drug imports in Brazil, economists and industry representatives said.

The increasingly strong import trend reflects Brazil’s technological lag in a world where the pace of both radical and incremental pharmaceutical innovation has accelerated since the COVID-19 pandemic.

From January to May, drug imports totaled $6.53 billion, up 14.4% from the same period in 2025. That pace far outstripped the 3.2% increase in Brazil’s overall imports. The growth is not isolated and has been gaining momentum. Medicines accounted for 5.6% of all Brazilian imports this year, compared with 5.1% in the same period of 2025 and 4.9% in 2024. In 2019, the share was 3.9%, considering the same five-month period.

For full-year 2025, drug imports reached $14.2 billion, up 18% from 2024, when they had grown 12.1%. In 2023, the increase was 11.4%. That marked three consecutive years of double-digit growth, something that had happened only once in the previous decade and a half — in 2021, when imports jumped 57.5% during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Datamar containerized cargo data shows that Brazil’s pharmaceutical imports rose 4.6%, reaching 5,066 TEUs in the cumulative January-April 2026 period. The chart below compares those volumes with the same period in recent years:

Pharmaceutical Imports | Jan-Apr | 2022 – 2026 | TEUs

Source: DataLiner (click here to request a demo)

From 2011 to 2020, annual imports ranged between $6 billion and $7 billion, close to half the amount brought into the country in 2025.

Aging population

Population aging and the expansion of public drug provision through Brazil’s Unified Health System (SUS) are helping increase demand, including for more expensive, higher value-added items that are not produced in Brazil. That, in turn, is fueling imports and widening the trade deficit in medicines, said Reginaldo Arcuri, chief executive of Grupo FarmaBrasil, an association representing pharmaceutical companies.

“There is demand for more advanced medicines for a population whose age profile is increasingly similar to that of the Northern Hemisphere, but in a country that, unfortunately, still has very low per capita income,” Arcuri said.

Data from statistics agency IBGE show that people aged 40 or older rose to 43.9% of Brazil’s population in the first quarter of this year, from 37.1% in the same period of 2017.

“In a country like Brazil, with very high social inequality, it is essential for the health system to provide free medicines,” said Walter Cintra Ferreira Junior, a public health physician and professor of health management at Getulio Vargas Foundation’s São Paulo School of Business Administration (FGV EAESP).

“It is not enough for people to have access to a medical appointment or, eventually, a procedure. We have a population that is aging rapidly, which makes chronic diseases a very clear public health problem,” he said. “From a health economics standpoint, it is much better to invest in medication as public policy.”

Arcuri said current demand creates an opportunity for the industry because it shows there is a market for producing and selling more advanced medicines. But imports reflect a structural supply problem, he said, stemming from the local pharmaceutical industry’s limitations not only in technological innovation, but also in large-scale production of some types of drugs and access to financing.

Weight-loss drugs

Of the five best-selling medicines in Brazil’s retail market from 2021 to 2025, four are not produced in the country. Weight-loss drugs are on that list: Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro rank first, third and fifth, respectively.

The second-best-selling drug is Forxiga, used to treat diabetes, heart failure and kidney disease. Only its packaging is produced in Brazil. Under the Farmácia Popular program, patients who meet the requirements have been able to obtain the medicine free of charge at pharmacies since February 2025. The only top-five drug produced domestically is the diabetes medication Glifage XR.

While drug imports have taken off in recent years, the sector’s exports have remained stagnant. From January to May, Brazil exported $499.2 million in medicines. Since at least 2017, exports in the period have stayed close to $450 million or $500 million. The annual picture is similar, with foreign sales hovering near $1 billion over the past 10 years.

The trade deficit in medicines reached $13.1 billion in 2025, after hitting $11 billion in 2024. In 2019, it stood at $5.9 billion. The annual figures are from FarmaBrasil, while the partial data were compiled by Valor based on Mercosur Common Nomenclature (NCM) trade codes provided by the association.

“This is a technological gap that shows up as a trade deficit in the pharmaceutical sector. As innovation activity accelerated globally after the pandemic, this problem keeps resurfacing from time to time. Now it is reflected in weight-loss drugs. Brazil not only needs to catch up technologically, but to do so faster,” said Rafael Cagnin, chief economist at the Institute for Industrial Development Studies (Iedi).

Brazil’s demographic trends are also bringing biopharmaceuticals to the fore, including monoclonal antibodies linked to chronic diseases that become more common with age, such as dementia and cancer, he said. “These are medicines we have very little capacity to make.”

High-tech deficit

Alongside aircraft manufacturing and the electronics complex, pharmaceuticals are classified as a high-technology segment within manufacturing—a group that has a structural trade deficit. Drug imports have contributed to widening that negative balance. Iedi data show that, in the first quarter of 2026, medicines accounted for 34% of high-tech imports, up from 25.9% in 2010.

On the export side, pharmaceuticals represented 15% of high-tech sales abroad in 2010, rose as high as 26.5% in 2022, but have been declining and returned to 15% this year, always considering the January-to-March period. Sector data show that the rise in Brazilian imports has been driven especially by immunological products, vaccines, biological therapies, cancer drugs and specialized biotechnology products.

Cagnin said Brazil’s limitations are not confined to the most innovative medicines. Even before biopharmaceuticals, in the so-called synthetic routes linked to generics, Brazil managed to develop production capacity, but not the entire chain.

Arcuri said Brazil’s generics policy succeeded in expanding public access to medicines and lowering prices. But companies still face challenges producing APIs, the active pharmaceutical ingredients used in generics. “There are limits in scale and financing capacity, although companies continue to develop. Some companies produce their own APIs in Brazil and have verticalized part of production. But most are still imported.”

Arcuri noted that generics and similar drugs still account for most of the volume of medicines consumed in Brazil. Globally, China stands out as a producer of APIs, while India is a leading supplier of finished generics.

Coordinated policy

Arcuri said Brazil needs a coordinated development program aimed at innovation in the sector. Other countries, he said, have aggressive policies in place. “The largest producer of medicines, especially of radical and incremental innovation, is the United States, which is also Brazil’s largest external supplier of medicines. And then other countries, especially OECD [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development] members, continue to invest heavily.”

Beyond those countries, he said, India, China and South Korea have also established public policies in this area, aimed not only at industrial production but also at training and improving regulatory standards.

After the U.S., European countries dominate drug supply to Brazil. From January to May, the U.S. accounted for 24% of all medicines imported by Brazil. The next-largest sources were Germany, with 15%; Switzerland, with 9%; and Ireland and Italy, with 8% and 7%, respectively.

Source: Valor International

Sharing is caring!