For some period in the future, China’s logistics industry will enter the new development stage with quality and benefit improvement as the core, and we must stick to efficiency improvement, quality enhancement, and innovation driving, actively introduce new technology, new model, and new idea, do ‘addition’ for transformation and upgrading, and gradually release the new driving force for industry development; stick to deepening structural reform of the supply side, reduce the logistics cost of the whole industry chain, improve logistics supply quality, do the ‘subtraction’ for cost decreasing and benefit increasing, and continue to strengthen the competitiveness of real economy," said He Liming, President of China Federation of Logistics & Purchasing, when receiving interview of reporter of China Economic Times recently.
According to He Liming, some period in the future will be the key period for the quality and efficiency improvement of the pharmaceutical logistics industry of China. The pharmaceutical logistics industry is closely related to people’s health, and has big development space; the sustained and rapid development of the industry is of positive significance to improving the health security and securing a decisive victory in building a moderately prosperous society in all respects. How the future directions of the industry will be and how the industry shall embrace changes need the common attention of the government, industry, and enterprises.
China’s pharmaceutical logistics industry shows good development momentum
China Economic Times: What do you think is the current situation of the pharmaceutical logistics and circulation field in China? What are the new characteristics?
He Liming: As an important market segment of the logistics industry, the pharmaceutical logistics has a clear trend of upstream and downstream synergetic development of supply chain, and overall prominent quality and benefits. According to recent data, the total sales of the seven big categories of medical commodities in China reached RMB 1.8 trillion in 2016, growing by 10.4% year on year, with the market demands maintained fast growth. In the first half of this year, the added value of pharmaceutical enterprises above a designated scale grew by 11.3% year on year, with 4.4 percent higher than the overall industry growth, at the forefront of the whole industry. The growth of demand for pharmaceutical logistics was above 10% in the first three quarters of this year, with the market maintaining a fast growth situation. Overall, the pharmaceutical logistics and circulation field in China mainly shows the following new characteristics:
Firstly, the government regulation becomes increasingly strict. The promotion and implementation of the Plan on Deepening the Reform of Medical and Health System during the 13th Five-year Plan Period and Several Opinions on Further Reforming and Improving the Policies for Drug Production, Distribution and Use issued by the State Council of China in the first half of this year, and the Amendment of the Drug Administration Law of the People's Republic of China (Draft for Comment) issued recently, especially the "two-invoice system" reform for pharmaceutical product purchasing, raise the requirements for regulation of pharmaceutical product circulation in China to an all-time high. In the medical device field, the Decision on Amending the Regulation on the Supervision and Administration of Medical Devices issued by the State Council of China, and the intensive unannounced inspections conducted by China Food and Drug Administration, lead to stricter safety regulation of device quality.
Secondly, the enterprise merger and restructuring are ongoing. According to the industry monitoring data, pharmaceutical circulation enterprises of some size are actively conducting layout on the market, for example, large pharmaceutical enterprises such as China Resources and Shanghai Pharma continue to absorb outlets through merger and restructuring, conduct layout in China, and move towar...
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