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Medicines Exports

Map No. 67

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Of worldwide export earnings, 3.2% is from medicine exports. Here, medicines include medical equipment.

Territories in Western Europe receive 74% of all earnings from exports of medicines. These territories account for 91% of net medicine exports (US$). Ireland has the highest value of exports (US$ net). Much of the Ireland trade is the export of imports.

Non-European net exporters include China, India, Mexico and Singapore. India is a major source of medicines. Indian medicines are sold more cheaply than European medicines, therefore India’s export earnings are lower, so India appears smaller on this map.

"... in the pharmaceutical sector the winners will be the large northern-based transnational companies ..." John Sulston, 2001

Territory size shows the proportion of worldwide net exports of medicine (in US$) that come from there. Net exports are exports minus imports. When imports are larger than exports the territory is not shown.

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• Data files: Excel (large with map), Excel (small no map), Opendoc format (see notes)
• Technical notes for this data.
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• All of the data we use is estimated; see data page