Profits Rose for Pharmaceutical Makers in 2010   

China's pharmaceutical industry achieved a total production value of about RMB1.25 trillion in 2010, up about 27% year on year. Statistics show that in the first eleven months of 2010, China's pharmaceutical industry achieved a total production value of RMB1.12 trillion, up 26.4%, of which the chemical API (active pharmaceutical ingredients) sector achieved a production value of RMB215.7 billion, up 24.4% year on year; the chemical pharmaceutical preparations sector RMB318.56 billion, up 24.1%; and the medical equipment and apparatus sector RMB104.83 billion, up 23.2 %. In the first eleven months of 2010, the Chinese pharmaceutical industry gained about 15% on the industrial added value, nearly 5 percentage points higher than the growth of the national economy over the same period.
   In the full year of 2010, the Chinese pharmaceutical industry realized combined profits of about RMB125 billion, up 28.5%. The continuous uptrend of the pharmaceutical market has enhanced the profit margin of the pharmaceutical industry. Among sectors, those who contributed most to the total profits in 2010 include the chemical pharmaceutical preparation, the chemical API, the Chinese patent medicine and the biological and biochemical products sectors.
   In the first eleven months of 2010, the fixed assets investment of the Chinese pharmaceutical industry totaled at RMB175.33 billion, up 28.8%. The medical equipment and apparatus and the chemical pharmaceutical preparations sectors led the fixed assets investment in the pharmaceutical industry as the policy to encourage the localization of medical equipment and apparatus has promoted investors' continued enthusiasms, and on the other hand, preparing for new-version GMP has stimulated significant investments in the chemical pharmaceutical preparations sector. In addition, the overall implementation of the pharmaceutical industry's new standards for water pollutant discharge, the gradual arrival of special funds for major new drug research projects and increase of corporate investment in new drug research and production have all driven up the fixed asset investment in the pharmaceutical industry.
   In the first eleven months of 2010, the overall production/sales rate of the Chinese pharmaceutical industry was 94.9%, down 0.6 percentage points from the previous year, which was impacted by the implementation of the new-version Pharmacopoeia Rule. In particular, a new regulation requires that all newly produced drugs must use modified specifications and labels. By sector, except for the pharmaceutical equipment sector and the Chinese herbal medicine processing sector, the production/sales rates of other sectors all declined in varying degrees. Among them, the biological and biochemical products sector declined most, down 1.6 percentage points, followed by the chemical API sector, down 1.1 percentage points.
   The total imports and exports of the Chinese pharmaceutical industry in the full year of 2010 accumulated to about US$60 billion, up 26%.