China's OTC market is expected to maintain rapid growth, with a long way to go

[pharmaceutical network market analysis] in recent years, with the continuous promotion of policies such as prescription drug channel restriction, medicine separation and the aggravation of population aging, China's OTC market is expected to maintain rapid growth However, in 2020, under the influence of policies such as purchasing with volume and no longer adding OTC varieties to the new version of medical insurance catalogue, Chinese OTC enterprises are facing opportunities and challenges OTC market keeps rapid growth In recent years, OTC market has experienced rapid growth driven by policy and market demand On the one hand, with the continuous promotion of prescription drug channel restrictions, medicine separation and other policies, the OTC market in China continues to expand; on the other hand, with the aggravation of the aging population and the upgrading of consumption level, people's awareness of health management is constantly enhanced, which drives the demand growth of OTC market According to some reports, China has become the second largest health consumption and OTC market in the world, with an average annual growth rate of 6% The industry expects that in the future, driven by the acceleration of population aging, the OTC industry is expected to maintain a growth rate of about 10% At the same time, with the expansion of China's big health market, it is expected that the OTC market scale will expand from about 300 billion yuan at present to 600-800 billion yuan in the future The market scale is very large There is a long way to go for enterprises in the future At present, with the opening of policies, in addition to retail pharmacies, some Internet e-commerce, China Post and even chain convenience stores are competing for the OTC market In December 2019, the China Post pharmacy opened by China Post Branch officially opened, which means another retail giant entering the pharmaceutical industry In the future, China Post pharmacy will take pharmaceutical retail as its main business, pharmaceutical logistics distribution, e-commerce and retail chain as its main business areas, and set up chain retail pharmacies in appropriate areas of the region In addition, after the retail chain giants such as Wumei, Suning and Watson entered the drugstore market, in June 2019, the convenience store of Yijie under Sinopec Group is also applying for the drug business license to enter the pharmaceutical retail industry It can be seen that in the future, the battle for terminal resources in the pharmaceutical industry is imminent In this context, pharmaceutical companies accelerate the layout of this field, and improve their competitiveness through differentiated competition, increasing R & D efforts, and strengthening academic promotion For example, recently, at the "Health China Golden Magpie annual meeting and the 11th 39th health general evaluation list award ceremony", the OTC brand landi calcium under Zhendong pharmaceutical was selected successfully Zhendong pharmaceutical mentioned that by integrating Langdi calcium, a mature OTC brand, Zhendong pharmaceutical realized the rapid development of the company's layout in the OTC field It is reported that Zhendong pharmaceutical has an early layout in this field At present, it is taking landi calcium as the core to drive the sales of 118 differentiated OTC products of the company, forming a unique OTC market Xintian pharmaceutical also mentioned in its 2018 annual report that in 2018, the company will continue to actively layout the OTC market, increase product research and development, strengthen the promotion of professional chemistry, and expand the company's product market coverage to improve the company's overall performance According to the 2019 half year report released by China traditional Chinese medicine, during the reporting period, the group's revenue increased by 27% year-on-year, mainly due to the continuous high-speed and stable growth of traditional Chinese medicine formula granules business and the development of proprietary medicine business in OTC channels The industry believes that in 2020, with the promotion of policies such as volume purchase and new version of medical insurance catalog no longer adding OTC varieties, OTC enterprises will also usher in a very important period of development At the same time, enterprises themselves need to adjust their strategies in time to adapt to the new environment In general, China's OTC enterprises have a long way to go.