Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, June 04, 2002
Finished-drug Exports Urged
China is the world's leading exporter of pharmaceutical raw materials, an industry official said yesterday, but the government should do more to encourage the export of finished drugs, which are more profitable.
China is the world's leading exporter of pharmaceutical raw materials, an industry official said yesterday, but the government should do more to encourage the export of finished drugs, which are more profitable.
Cui Bin, a spokesman for the China Chamber of Commerce of Medicines & Health Products Importers & Exporters, said the government had concentrated on exporting the powders, granules and liquids used to make drugs as a way of reducing a domestic glut.
But "more attention should be paid to the business of exporting finished products, because they are more value-added and thus more profitable," Cui said.
He spoke at a three-day international raw material exposition called CPhI China 2002, held at Intex Shanghai. The show, which ends tomorrow, drew some 400 pharmaceutical firms from China and such other lands as Germany, Italy and India.
China exported US$200 million worth of finished pharmaceutical products last year. But exports of pharmaceutical raw materials, mainly for Western medicines, reached US$2.1 billion.
Exporters of finished products receive a tax rebate of 13 percent, while raw material exporters get 15 percent or 17 percent.
"That is irrational," Cai said.
"It puts pressure on the already ailing finished product exporters."
But few pharmaceutical producers interviewed at the expo favored a change of emphasis.
Despite the appealing market in Western countries for finished drugs, Chinese manufacturers find it hard to meet their drug administrations' strict requirements, they said.
"The Western demand for raw materials is also huge," said Wei Puren, an engineer at a trading subsidiary of Qilu Pharmaceutical Group.