OBJECTIVES: Estimation of the direct and indirect savings generated by parallel importing (PI) of pharmaceutical products in public pharmacies in Poland, and estimation of the savings for the payer in the case of reimbursed drugs. METHODS: IMS Health Poland National Sales Data (2005-2012) and data from respective reimbursement lists were used for all calculations. Direct savings were estimated considering all PI products sold in public pharmacies(433 products, 1550 SKUs). To avoid overestimation, only 18 products that passed restrictive criteria were used for calculations of indirect savings. 27 reimbursed products were used for the payer savings calculations. Direct savings were calculated as a difference between PI and reference product prices multiplied by the number of packs of PI product. Indirect savings were calculated as a difference between the reference product price and the theoretical reference product price (i.e. prices in a hypothetical situation where there is no price pressure caused by PI – calculated using linear regression). Indirect savings considered only those products which met the criteria of the reference product’s price decrease of at least 5% within 3 months prior to, or after, the appearance of the PI product.  RESULTS: Study revealed that the savings generated by the PI of pharmaceuticals in Poland between 2005-2012 may be estimated at the level of EUR 146m (direct savings EUR 46m and indirect savings EUR 100m). Savings for the payer calculated for reimbursed products between 2008-2012 reached the level of EUR 0.06m. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first study estimating direct and indirect savings coming from PI phenomena covering all years since PI was reinforced by Poland’s accession to the EU. It has been found very interesting that indirect savings tend to be substantially higher that direct ones. This indicates that high price pressure is created by PI, and affects the prices of reference products.