The Philippine government is seeking price cuts on more medicines, asking drugmakers including Pfizer Inc. and GlaxoSmithKline Plc to halve prices of some top-selling products for the second time in five months.

The reductions may affect more than 21 drugs and could be introduced by the end of March, Health Undersecretary Alex Padilla said in an interview yesterday. Five “major” drug companies have submitted lists of medicines and the health department expects others to submit lists this week, Padilla said. The deadline for submission was extended to Jan. 22 from Jan. 14, he said.

The Philippines lowered by 50 percent the prices of 21 medicines in August, a year after a law requiring drug price cuts was passed.
Medicines in the Philippines can be two to three times higher than in neighboring Asian nations, the government has said. The 2008 law also gives the president power to impose “maximum retail prices.”

“There is some apprehension that these reductions will be mandatory but the department is willing to work with drug companies on this,” Padilla said. “We prefer that prices are brought down voluntarily. If not, then we have to impose.”

Drug companies generated about P116 billion in sales in the Philippines in 2008, up 10.2 percent from 2007, according to the Pharmaceutical Health Care Association of the Philippines, or PHAP. In June, the association forecast revenue would expand 7 percent in 2009.

In a Jan. 6 letter from the health department to the association obtained by Bloomberg News, the government said it wants price reductions on treatments that have limited generic competition, on those that are the “top-selling and most expensive,” are currently sold at prices two to three times higher than in neighboring Asian nations, and those that have “public health significance.”

The association has 51 members, including New York-based Pfizer and London-based Glaxo, according to its Web site. The first round of price cuts caused 600 job losses in the nation’s pharmaceutical industry, PHAP said in an e-mailed statement.