MANILA - Growth and digitization remain as priorities for affordable pharmaceutical company Generika Drugstore amid price pressures such as rising prices from suppliers and depreciating peso, its chairman said Friday.

Generika Drugstore planned to open more branches to bring affordable medicines to more communities nationwide as part of its 5-year strategy, its co-founder and chairman Ted Ferrer told Cathy Yang in an exclusive interview with The Boss.

But Ferrer said the rising prices of goods, the buying power of the people and increased competition brought its targets down to "realistic" levels.

The drugstore made "small adjustments" to its pricing early this year but Ferrer vowed to "absorb" changes as much as they can to keep prices low.

He however, said they would tend to follow the price increase the suppliers have made on branded products.

"This year there has been a lot more pressure on prices, a lot of it coming from the suppliers who raised their prices and this is also partly because of inflation, exchange rate and so we have had no choice but to make some adjustments but only small adjustments," Ferrer said.

"But still the corporate vision that we really want to grow to open more outlets all over the country to be able to serve many more communities – that stays. The direction stays but the speed of implementations we may have to make some adjustments," Ferrer said.

Generika also planned "to stay on top" and adopt technological innovations to provide more value-added services to the community by offering products such as electric gift check MEDPadala.