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Businessweek, by Regina Tan and Simeon Bennett, January 18, 2010, 05:29 AM EST

Jan. 18 (Bloomberg) -- GlaxoSmithKline Plc forecasts sales growth of as much as 10 percent in the Asia-Pacific region this year, in line with the market and last year"s 9 percent increase, spurred by economic expansion in emerging markets.

The strongest growth will come from Southeast Asian nations such as Indonesia and the Philippines, where swelling wealth and lower prices for some drugs are spurring sales, Christophe Weber, London-based Glaxo"s regional director, said in an interview in Singapore today. Sales of some of the company"s products have surged in the past year, including a 10-fold jump for cervical cancer vaccine Cervarix, he said.

Chief Executive Officer Andrew Witty is relying on revenue from emerging markets including Asia to prop up sagging sales in the U.S., its biggest market. Revenue from emerging markets expanded 25 percent in the third quarter, compared with a 12 percent decline in the U.S. and a 3 percent increase in Europe, the company said in October.

“You have different types of market in the region,” Weber said in an interview at his office. “You have more mature markets like Australia and New Zealand, and then you have more emerging markets which are fast-developing markets like all the middle-income countries in Southeast Asia.”

Northeast Asian countries such as Korea and Taiwan “are in the middle,” Weber said.

The Asian Development Bank expects economic growth of 5.4 percent in Indonesia this year, making it the region"s third- fastest behind Vietnam and Laos.

Price Cuts

Glaxo, which ranks fourth among drugmakers in Asia-Pacific, cut prices last year in the world"s poorest countries, including Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Papua New Guinea, to 25 percent of what it charges in Western nations.

The company said in June that it planned to reduce the price of Cervarix in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand, and lower the price of 28 products in the Philippines by as much as 50 percent after the nation"s government asked Glaxo and rivals such as Pfizer Inc. and Sanofi-Aventis SA to cut prices.

Glaxo is also reinvesting 20 percent of its earnings from poor countries into health infrastructure development such as hospitals and projects for clean water and sanitation, Weber said.

“If you just reduce your price but you don’t change the way you market your product, promote your products, then you won’t have a volume increase,” Weber said. “Patient education is very important as well. How do you educate the doctor, the patient or the population in case of prevention so that they feel that they should be vaccinated?”

--Editors: Lars Klemming, Carey Sargent.

To contact the reporters on this story: Regina Tan in Singapore +65-6499-2833 or at RTan63@bloomberg.net; Simeon Bennett in Singapore at +65-6212-1574 or sbennett9@bloomberg.net

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