Iranian pharmaceutical industry figures warned that illicit Iranian-made medicines are increasingly appearing in Afghanistan, undercutting legal exports and deepening shortages at home.
Pharmaceutical sector representatives say the flow has accelerated after Pakistan curtailed drug exports to Afghanistan, turning Iran’s subsidized market into an attractive source for traffickers.
They argue that wide price gaps between Iran and neighboring countries have made smuggling structurally profitable, sidelining legal export channels.
Drug production has increased by around 50% but shortages persist, Mohsen Abdollahzadeh, a board member of the Drug Distributors Syndicate said on Tuesday.
“Drug smuggling from Iran to Iraq and Afghanistan is so extensive that traders in those countries are unable to import medicines legally and cannot compete with smuggled Iranian drugs,” he added.
Food and Drug Administration of Iran has conceded that so-called “reverse smuggling” exists, driven by sharp price differences with neighboring markets.
However, spokesperson Mohammad Hashemi disputed a widespread surge, saying documented cases remain limited. Continued leakage, he warned, could trigger intermittent shortages and place further strain on an already fragile supply chain.
Recent talks with an Afghan delegation, Hashemi said, focused on expanding formal pharmaceutical exports and improving monitoring, a move critics say reflects belated damage control rather than a solution to entrenched enforcement gaps.
Food market shows same fault lines
The controversy mirrors developments in food markets, where currency policy shifts and the removal of subsidized exchange rates have driven sharp increases in staple prices.
Analysts say both sectors show the same pattern: multiple pricing regimes and weak oversight have encouraged arbitrage and cross-border leakage.
For consumers, the result has been recurrent shortages and rising costs, as subsidized goods – whether medicine or food – slip out of regulated channels faster than authorities can contain them.
Authorities say medicines are still available for now, but concede that delays in transferring allocated foreign exchange, mounting arrears to suppliers and dwindling inventories have pushed the sector to the brink, increasing the risk of shortages in the final months of the Iranian year, which ends on March 20.
In an economy battered by chronic inflation and currency volatility, officials say, keeping drug prices frozen shifts the burden onto manufacturers and ultimately jeopardizes national drug supply chain.
