German Pharma Industry Grew Exports By 14.3% During COVID-19 Pandemic

Exports of Germany's pharmaceutical industry from March to May increased by 14.3 percent year-on-year to 22.1 billion euros (25.3 billion U.S. dollars), the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) announced.

"The pharmaceutical industry is one of the few branches which recorded large increases in exports at the beginning of the coronavirus crisis," Destatis noted.

In comparison, Germany's total exports collapsed by 22.6 per cent between March and May compared to the same period last year, according to Destatis.

In March, exports of German pharmaceutical products even reached a new record level, rising by 27.8 percent to 8.2 billion euros compared with the same month last year, according to Destatis.

In recent years, the pharmaceutical industry in Germany had been more and more focusing on export business and the gap between exports and imports was "increasingly growing," according to Destatis.

In 2009, the export surplus was still 12.8 billion euros but more than doubled to around 27.6 billion euros by 2019, according to Destatis. In total, Germany exported pharmaceutical products worth 80.7 billion euros last year.

The most important sales market was the U.S. with a 17.1 percent share of total exports, followed by the Netherlands and Switzerland, according to Destatis.

The export of pharmaceutical products to non-EU countries grew particularly strong and almost tripled since 2009, increasing from 14.7 billion euros to 42.7 billion euros in 2019, according to Destatis. (1 euro=1.14 U.S. dollars)