If VAT over medication would be lifted, Bulgaria would have the lowest prices, Health Minister Radoslav Gaidarski said when he opened the National Pharmaceutical Forum of the Union of Bulgarian Pharmaceutical Producers in Sofia on November 15.

According to him, for Bulgarian patients it would be better if the Health Ministry would lift VAT over medication or at least lower its rate, Dnevnik daily reported.

There would be a change in the surplus charges for wholesale. Currently there were surplus charges which had almost reached the maximum allowed of 24 per cent. Pharmacists wanted the maximum surplus charges, which last year were 29 per cent, Gaidarski said.

The law required the state to set the rate for surplus charges and there was nothing more to be said about it, he added.

According to him, pharmacists wanted enormous profits, but that couldn't happen because the way the system in Bulgaria worked, it should have the lowest prices in Europe. Unfortunately, when 20 per cent VAT was added, Bulgaria was no longer the country with the lowest prices, but had much higher prices than surrounding countries, Gaidarski said.

According to him, the Ministry had no intention to drive pharmacies to bankruptcy as a result of lowering the surplus charges for medication.
Regulating medication prices was in the interest of patients, he said. In Europe there were countries who charged 25 per cent VAT over medication, others 20, again others 19, and in some it was as low as eight per cent. But that was individual politics of each member state.

Repeatedly he had requested lower VAT rate for medication, but this was a national policy matter and not up to the Health Ministry, Gaidarski said.