One of the first things I explain to leaders arriving in the Gulf from other markets: you do not set the public price.
The health authority does. What the company controls is the quality of its evidence, and the order in which the work is done.
The sequence, in simple terms:
Register the product. The authority reviews and registers the medicine. Nothing else moves before the licence.
Submit the price dossier. The company submits. The authority sets the public price.
Build the value case. Clinical and economic evidence for insurers and hospital committees. It has to answer the payer's real question: why this, and for which patients?
Secure listing and cover. Formulary listings and insurance cover, one payer at a time. A registered price is not yet a covered medicine.
What a country manager does decide is net price: discounts, rebates, bonus goods and tender bids, all within the rules and the agreements. That is where commercial judgement lives. The public price is not ours to move.
The mistake I see most often is a launch forecast built as if cover will arrive the day after registration. Cover takes its own time, and that timing is not in our hands.
“The authority sets the price. The evidence earns the cover.”
Lesson 5 of 17 in Step 4: Distributors and market access, with the full guide and a checklist for this week.