LONDON, Feb 9 (Reuters) – The cost of the euro zone crisis is mounting for drugmakers, with unpaid debts owed to the pharmaceuticals sector now estimated by the industry’s European trade body at up to $20 billion.

With payment times also getting longer, drug companies expect Europe to remain a significant drag on their businesses throughout 2012.

“Things are getting rapidly worse,” said Richard Bergstrom, director general of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (Efpia).

His organisation puts the total outstanding European debt for medicines at between 12 billion and 15 billion euros ($16-20 billion), up from around 10 billion estimated last November.

Nearly all of those unpaid bills are in four countries – Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy — which lie at the heart of the crisis, Bergstrom told Reuters in an email.

The deterioration in Europe comes at a difficult time for a global drugs industry that is already struggling with a flood of patent losses, rising research costs and risk-averse regulators.

Unlike makers of other consumer goods, pharmaceutical companies face ethical pressures to continue to deliver their products, at least where alternatives are not available, even if bills go unpaid.

LONDON (Reuters) – GlaxoSmithKline Plc is getting more bang for its buck in drug research, underpinning expectations for a return to sales and margin growth despite fourth-quarter results that fell short of analyst forecasts.

Britain’s biggest drugmaker said on Tuesday it had lifted financial returns from its laboratories to an estimated 12 percent, from 11 percent two years ago, and was confident of reaching its longer-term 14 percent target.

That augurs well for the future but doesn’t offset near-term challenges such as pricing pressures in Europe and some emerging markets.

Still, Chief Executive Andrew Witty reiterated GSK was on track to return to sales growth in 2012, after a difficult few years, with gradually improving margins.

GSK is alone among major pharmaceutical companies in setting a clear target for research productivity and the increase in its reported internal rate of return on research and development (R&D) contrasts with an industry-wide decline.

Lack of investor confidence in R&D spending is arguably the biggest challenge facing Big Pharma, since it results in investors ascribing little or no value to drug pipelines.

While GSK’s R&D returns are still below its long-term goal of 14 percent, research head Moncef Slaoui said they were set to increase as the benefits feed through of recent cost-cutting measures and further pipeline progress.

LONDON (Reuters) – GlaxoSmithKline (GSK.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) is getting more bang for its buck in drug research following an overhaul of the way it hunts for new medicines that has lifted financial returns from its labs to an estimated 12 percent from 11 percent two years ago.

Britain’s biggest drugmaker said on Tuesday it was confident of reaching its 14 percent target, even as it reported fourth-quarter results that fell short of analyst expectations.

Turnover in the final quarter of 2011 was 3 percent down from a year earlier at 6.98 billion pounds ($11.03 billion) and earnings per share before major restructuring costs were 28.4 pence against a loss of 7.5p.

Analysts, on average, had forecast sales 7.33 billion pounds and EPS of 29.0p, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Chief Executive Andrew Witty reiterated that GSK was on track to return to full-year sales growth in 2012, with gradually improving margins.

GSK is alone among major pharmaceutical companies in setting a clear target for research productivity and the increase in its

reported internal rate of return (IRR) on research and development (R&D) contrasts with an industry-wide decline.