The Role of Cartels in Pakistan's Pharmaceutical Sector: A Study of Price Fixing and Its Economic Impact
Keywords:
Cartels. Pharmaceutical Sector. Price Fixing. Economic Impact. Pakistan. Market Regulation. Competition Law. Drug Prices. Regulatory FrameworkAbstract
This author undertakes an analysis of the cartels in the Pakistani pharmaceutical industry with the main aim of establishing the practice of cartelization of prices. In the present years, political and socioeconomic factors in the Pakistan’s pharmaceutical sector can be analyzed in terms of regulation, competition, and market manipulation by cartels. This paper analyzes the nature and formations of cartels in this sector, the impact of the cartel on the prices of drugs, availability of the essential medicine, and consumers’ welfare. To examine the effects of the cartel infliction in the pharmaceutical market and on the country’s health care system, this paper adopts legal, economic and policy analyses. Therefore, this paper attempts to explore how effective Pakistan’s current healthcare policy is in achieving its health objectives, compare its environment with other well-developed countries, and finally provide reforms that can lead to a healthier nation.
References
Ahmad, R., Shahzad, K., Ishaq, M. I., & Aftab, J. (2023). Supply chain agility and firm performance: testing serial mediations in pharmaceutical industry. Business Process Management Journal, 29(4), 991-1009.
Connor, J. M. (2024). PRICE-FIXING OVERCHARGES: REVISED 4th EDITION. Available at SSRN 4906907.
Darr, A. (2023). India and Pakistan. In Research Handbook on Cartels (pp. 419-437). Edward Elgar Publishing.
Haider, R. (2023). Pharmaceutical Market: An Overview.
Iqbal, S., Bashir, M., Bureš, V., Zanker, M., Ullah, S., & Rizwan, A. (2025). Impact of knowledge sharing and innovation on performance of organization: evidence from the pharmaceutical industry of Pakistan. Cogent Business & Management, 12(1), 2471536.
Jannat, A., Shafiq, N., Hanif, M., Riasat, M., & Rafique, S. (2023). A brief insight to Pakistan’s pharmaceutical industry-A critical review study. Pakistan Journal of Medical & Health Sciences, 17(02), 2-2.
Jamshed, J., & Bakhsh, F. (2023). Pakistan's War on Drugs: Examining the Integral Contributions of Police and Prosecution in Narcotics Trials. Current Trends in Law and Society, 3(1), 66-76.
Khan, M. A. A., & Rauf, A. (2024). Promoting local production and active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) industry in low and middle income countries (LMICs): impact on medicines access and policy. Journal of Pharmaceutical Policy and Practice, 17(1), 2323683.
Khan, M. S., Rahman-Shepherd, A., Noor, M. N., Siddiqui, A. R., Goodman, C., Wiseman, V., ... & Hasan, R. (2024). " Caught in Each Other’s Traps": Factors Perpetuating Incentive-Linked Prescribing Deals Between Physicians and the Pharmaceutical Industry. International journal of health policy and management, 13, 8213.
Khan, M., Rahman-Shepherd, A., Noor, M. N., Sharif, S., Hamid, M., Aftab, W., ... & Siddiqi, S. (2023). Incentivisation practices and their influence on physicians’ prescriptions: A qualitative analysis of practice and policy in Pakistan. PLOS global public health, 3(6), e0001890.
Mai, Z., Nawaz Saleem, H. M., & Kamran, M. (2023). The relationship between political instability and stock market performance: An analysis of the MSCI index in the case of Pakistan. Plos one, 18(10), e0292284.
Malik, M., Mehmood, S., Hussain, A., Hashmi, A., Aslam, U., Kow, C. S., & Jamshed, S. (2024). The perspectives of stakeholders on the National Medicine Policy of Pakistan: a qualitative study. Discover Public Health, 21(1), 1-13.
Mattera, P. (2023). Conspiring Against Competition. Social Policy, 53(2).
Mubarak, Z., Abbas, N., Hashmi, F. K., Husnain, S. Z., & Bukhari, N. I. (2024). Academia-pharmaceutical industry linkage: An academic perspective. Journal of Pharmaceutical Policy and Practice, 17(1), 2332872.
Mubarak, Z., Abbas, N., Hashmi, F. K., Shahbaz, H., & Bukhari, N. I. (2024). Industrial prospects on regulatory gaps and barriers in pharmaceutical exports and their counteraction: Local experiential with global implication. Plos one, 19(7), e0305989.
Mufti, A., & Ali, I. (2024). Export-led growth: Policy framework for sustainable development in Pakistan. Available at SSRN 4890578.
Nadeem, A., Mushtaq, S. A., Hafeez, M. M., Siddiqui, M. A., & Shahab, S. (2025). Examining the Role of Pakistan’s Competition Authority in Regulating Price Fixing and Trade Restriction Practices in the Pharmaceutical Industry. Indus Journal of Social Sciences, 3(1), 877-895.
Nadeem, A., Mushtaq, S. A., & Siddiqui, M. A. (2025). Regulating the Unregulated: Competition Law as a Tool to Combat High Drug Prices in Pakistan. The Critical Review of Social Sciences Studies, 3(1), 1287-1304.
Noor, M. N., Liverani, M., Bryant, J., Rahman-Shepherd, A., Sharif, S., Aftab, W., ... & Hasan, R. (2023). The healthcare field as a marketplace: general practitioners, pharmaceutical companies, and profit-led prescribing in Pakistan. Health sociology review, 32(2), 198-212.
Noor, M. N., Rahman-Shepherd, A., Siddiqui, A. R., Aftab, W., Shakoor, S., Hasan, R., & Khan, M. (2023). Socioecological factors linked with pharmaceutical incentive-driven prescribing in Pakistan. BMJ global health, 6(Suppl 3), e010853.
Nosheen, M., e Wahid, F., & Shah, F. (2024). OLIGOPOLY BEHAVIOR AND PRICE FIXING: THEORETICAL INSIGHTS AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS. Contemporary Journal of Social Science Review, 2(04), 1785-1793.
Qasem, D. A. O. A., Shoukat, K., Ahmed, A., Muneeb, M. A., Zubair, M., Younas, M. W., ... & Nissa, L. U. (2024). International trade of pharmaceutical and health industries along the “belt and road” countries. European Journal of Medical and Health Research, 2(1), 43-49.
Salman, M., Akram, H., Zarwish, B. E., Zaheer, M. H., & Rauf, N. (2023). The impact of inventory management on financial performance in the Pakistani pharmaceutical sector: A multivariate analysis. Asian Finance Research Journal (AFRJ).
Sajid, N., Aziz, A., Asif, S., Ashraf, S., Iqbal, A. A., Ali, G., ... & Ikram, J. (2024). Evaluation of Cost-Effective Therapy by Comparing Brands of the Same Formulation in Pakistan. Currents in Pharmaceutical Research, 2(1), 90-111.
Shah, M. Z., & Ali, T. (2023). Impact of marketing expenditures on sales of leading multinational & local pharmaceutical industries in Pakistan: A comparative study. Journal of Marketing and Management, 14(1), 18-32.
Shoukat, K., Jian, M., Umar, M., Kalsoom, H., Sijjad, W., Atta, S. H., & Ullah, A. (2023). Use of digital transformation and artificial intelligence strategies for pharmaceutical industry in Pakistan: Applications and challenges. Artif. Intell. Health, 1(1), 1486.
World Health Organization. (2024). WHO Global Benchmarking Tool (GBT) for evaluation of national regulatory system of medical products: manual for benchmarking and formulation of institutional development plans. World Health Organization.
Yuhui, W. (2023). Appraisal of existing evidence of competition law and policy: Bilateral legislative developments of Sino-Pak. Heliyon, 9(8).
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Amir Nadeem, Shahzada Aamir Mushtaq, Dr. Malik Muhammad Hafeez, Muhammad Ali Siddiqui, Dr. Shabnam Shahab

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.