Drug distributors have begun to reduce wholesale drug prices due to excess retail inventory.
Since mid-October, drug prices have stopped rising, and some items have been reduced by up to 1%. This trend was noticed by several pharmacy chains at once.
The 36.6 pharmacy chain told Kommersant that the prices of 3.5 thousand of the most popular items have returned to the level of mid-August this year; At the beginning of autumn they rose by a cumulative rate of 0.8%. Rigla-Zdarbcity estimates the current discount at about 1%.
The decrease may be due to a seasonal factor - until October, pharmaceutical retailers filled warehouses in anticipation of an increase in demand. Distributors also traditionally reconsider working terms with manufacturers at the end of the year and aim to reduce inventory.
At the same time, there was no jump in sales related to the start of the cold season this year. According to DSM Group data, in September 2026, 375.5 million packages of medicines were sold for 183.7 billion rubles, which is 3.6% less in volume terms from year to year and 11.4% more in monetary terms.