ABSTRACT
Puerto Rico today is the Caribbean’s only fully industrialised country. Dependent on pharmaceutical manufacturing, outbound shipment of products exceeded $31 billion in 2003. This represents approximately 42 per cent of the island’s gross domestic product (GDP). To highlight the significance of these figures, 16 out of the top 20 pharmaceutical drugs consumed in the United States and Canada are manufactured in Puerto Rico, including the top five (or the so-called ‘blockbuster drugs’) such as Lipotor, Zoloft and Viagra.1
