Report predicts chinese pharma market will reach $116.8bn in 2015

Monday 30 January 2012, Amsterdam

A new report predicts sustained double-digit growth in the Chinese pharmaceutical market from 2011. National healthcare reforms will stimulate sales of drugs there. Overall pharma revenues gained in China will rise to $116.8bn in 2015, increasing to 2022. That analysis appears in Chinese Pharmaceutical Market 2012-2022, published in December 2011.

In 2010, the overall Chinese pharmaceutical market generated $53.3bn, nearly a quarter of which came from anti-infective drugs. With China's chronic disease burden increasing, and its population ageing, revenue from 2012 to 2022 will increasingly come from treatments for cancer, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, diabetes and central nervous system (CNS) disorders. Sales of vaccines will also contribute to the overall growth, the study also notes.

Dr James Evans, a pharmaceutical industry analyst, said: "In recent years, China has been the best hope for the pharmaceutical industry, as thinning R&D pipelines, patent expiries and regulatory tightening leave growth in the developed markets slow at best and sclerotic at worst. With the healthcare reforms in China enlarging the market, the country is no longer a hope but a certainty for the medical industries. Every leading company is outsourcing operations to China, building contacts, partnerships and infrastructure, and adjusting its portfolio to that country. The main question is whose business activities will pay off best this decade."

The Chinese government's 2008 announcement of a programme to reform public healthcare is unprecedented, according to some industry figures. Its Healthy China 2020 plan will mean up to $1.4 trillion invested by 2020, surpassing even US spending on healthcare reforms. The report predicts the effects of rising purchase power and widening medical coverage on revenues from medicines.

In particular, the new study forecasts how pharma submarkets will perform to 2022. It predicts sales of patented brands, generics, OTC products, traditional medicines, anti-infectives, vaccines, cardiovascular/cerebrovascular, alimentary/metabolic, cancer and CNS treatments. The report discusses domestic companies such as China National Biotec Group, Sinopharm, WuXi AppTec, Beijing Pharmaceutical Group and Sinovac Biotech. It also describes activities of multinationals, including Pfizer, Sanofi, Bayer, AstraZeneca, Roche, Novartis, GSK, Merck, Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk. Medical R&D and drug manufacturing in China are gaining prominence.