Sales revenue of
China's biopharmaceutical industry hit 178
billion yuan ($28.92 billion) last year,
up 18.4 percent from 2011, and is
expected to maintain fast growth over
the coming years, said industrial
commerce chamber.
The boom is
mainly down to surging market demands
government support and the emergence
of Chinese companies, according to the
China Chamber of Commerce for the
Import and Export of Medicines and
Health Products.
China has
become an aging society, resulting in
a higher incidence of chronic diseases
and cancer. The effectiveness of
biomedicines against these illnesses is
much better than that of chemical
drugs so demand is likely to
continue to increase.
China's
12th Five-Year Development Plan (2011-2015)
made the biopharmaceutical sector one
of the seven key developing industries
and issued a series of supportive
policies. The policies include funds
for vaccine development, research into
devices for high-quality diagnosis and
protein-related biomedicine discovery. During
last year, a total of 3 billion
yuan was put into related projects.
The chamber forecasts more subsidies
are to be offered this
year.
Given the market demand
and government support, more and more
Chinese companies are devoting themselves
to the biopharmaceutical business. Currently
there are more than 400 local
biomedicine producers in China. The
biopharmaceutical sector accounted for 5
percent of China's pharmaceutical
market in terms of sales last
year.
The chamber pointed out
that the majority of China's
biopharmaceutical products are copy-cat
products and the industry urgently
needs to enhance research and
development capabilities to have their
own innovative biomedicines.
（Editor：WangXin、Chen
Lidan）
