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Over four thousand pharmacies may go bankrupt next year if market conditions do not improve, according to the data of the specialized research carried out by the MARC agency and which ws commissioned by the Pan-Hellenic Union of Pharmacists. 38% of respondents say they are likely to close their pharmacies soon.
 
Nine out of ten pharmacy owners say that the obligations that the state does not pay them, the reduced turnover and the lack of liquidity are the basis of their financial collapse. By the autumn, pharmacists had not received 400 million euro that go to cover part of the "free" medicines prescribed in 2010 and 2011 to patients insured with the national health insurance funds. In addition, the state owes hundreds of millions of euro for drugs prescribed in the current year.

82% of pharmacists explain that many of their customers cannot pay for their medicines and the "on credit" phenomenon is increasingly spreading. More than half of the respondents say they have serious difficulties in meeting their obligations to wholesalers, and one out of every three owners of pharmacies admits that he is unable to service his bank loans.

Many pharmacists in Greece have resorted to bank loans to secure the money to pay their suppliers, since the state does not pay on time the money for the prescribed medicines that are covered by health insurance funds. Due to the crisis in the banking sector, credit lines are now closed and pharmacists remain without a source of funding.

68% of surveyed pharmacists put the outstanding duties of health funds to pharmacies at the top of the list of problems. The lack of liquidity ranks second with 46%, the reduced turnover is in third place with 28% and the obligations to wholesalers are ranked fourth. The majority of respondents seem to accept the gravity of the situation and the threat of bankruptcy and the difficulties with bank lending share the last two places on the scale of existing problems.

The researchers have found out that pharmacists who have been working for less than six years experience more serious difficulties in cooperating with drug suppliers compared with older pharmacies. The respondents expect that the total annual turnover will fall by almost one third compared to last year, and more than half of the respondents are convinced that 2013 will be harder than 2012. 64% of respondents believe that the crisis will end in 2015 at the latest.

14% of the pharmacy owners state that they have fired staff over the last three years and only 6% have employed new staff. 73% state that during the last year, there was a change in the conditions under which their suppliers provide them with medicines and in the method of payment. "The economic suffocation of pharmacies has no end. For three years already, pharmacists have been the target of the government, trying to grapple with the situation as if the wastefulness in public health is our fault. This cannot continue," said firmly the chairman of the Pan-Hellenic Union of Pharmacists, Theodoros Abatsoglou.