The pharma industry is targeting USD 1.6 bn in exports by end-2026

The pharma industry is targeting around USD 1.6 bn in exports by the end of 2026, up from some USD 1.3 bn in 2025, Pharma Export Council head Mohy Hafez tells EnterpriseAM. This follows expansion into new markets and more competitive local products, with exports reaching USD 550 mn through May.

The government wants USD 3 bn by 2030: The domestic market is growing at a c. 15% CAGR — nearly double the global average according to a cabinet statement — while exports increased by around 20% y-o-y in 2025. Exports are expanding “vertically and horizontally,” Hafez says — deeper into existing markets and into new ones, with a growing push into Latin America, Central Asia, and Africa.

The market-access lever: The Egyptian Drug Authority (EDA) has joined a multilateral mutual-recognition framework with seven other African countries — Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe — to fast-track the registration and manufacturing of Egypt’s drugs. The mechanism, signed in June 2025, lets all eight WHO ML3-rated regulators rely on each other’s scientific assessments.

The push is helped by Egypt’s WHO Maturity Level 3 status — achieved for meds in December 2024 and vaccines in March 2022. Eight African countries now hold ML3 for meds, but Egypt is the only one rated ML3 for both meds and vaccines registration. “These agreements can save companies at least a full year of procedures, alongside cutting the costs tied to registration, manufacturing, and export,” Hafez says. EDA has signed 18 MoUs with counterpart regulators globally — including with Brazil, South Korea, Turkey, and others — to ease market access for local pharma products.

BUT- Financing is the sector’s biggest growth constraint, according to Hafez. Pharma faces forced pricing but gets no tailored financial tools. A government-backed 15% interest initiative — with the Finance Ministry subsidizing part of the cost — is positive, he says, but falls short: it’s capped, covers only fixed assets, and excludes working capital. That’s exactly what pharma companies need to buy raw materials, manufacture, and stockpile inventory before export revenue comes in.

ALSO- Domestic pricing does not directly affect export pricing, Hafez says. Exported drugs are priced according to each target market’s rules and negotiations — except to Saudi Arabia, which links its import price to the domestic government-set price.

The problem — and the solution: Egypt applies compulsory pricing domestically for social reasons, keeping some drug prices low. That makes exporting to Saudi Arabia — which pegs its acceptance price to Egypt’s local price — economically unviable. The EDA’s “simulation decision” fixes this by letting companies register products at a new, export-appropriate price when the domestic price is too low to allow economic export.

What’s next: Hitting USD 1.6 bn means a steep second half — exports were at USD 550 mn through May — and getting there rests on the financing gap. Hafez is pressing the Finance Ministry and the EDA to build tools aimed at working capital and operating costs — the piece the current program leaves out — and whether they deliver is what decides how fast exports actually climb.