State Council: The restriction on the spacing of the opening of pharmacies has been lifted nationwide

State Council: promote the cancellation of drug retail enterprises to prepare for approval, urge local clean-up of the opening of pharmacies set spacing restrictions and other unreasonable conditions.According to the "National Deepening of the Reform of "Management Services" Reform and Optimization of the Business Environment Teleconsecond Key Tasks Division of Tasks Program (hereinafter referred to as the "Programme") issued recently by the General Office of the State Council, the distance limit will be lifted throughout the country in the future.The Program points out that: optimize the approval of the opening of pharmacies, implement a notification commitment system for the approval of retail enterprises applying to start a class B-only over-the-counter drug, promote the cancellation of the approval of pharmaceutical retail enterprises, urge local authorities to clean up unreasonable conditions such as spacing restrictions on the opening of pharmacies, and jointly strengthen after-the-fact supervision.By removing spacing restrictions, industry competition isand only by removing distance requirements can competitive pharmacies be encouraged to participate in the industry.In fact, as early as 2014, Xie Zilong proposed to lift the distance limit when pharmacies opened.In practice, on the basis of implementing the Drug Administration Law, the distance limit for the opening of pharmacies has always been a broad discretionary article of the drug regulatory departments everywhere.In the past, in order to prevent pharmacies from piling up, many places, including Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and so on, have requested the location spacing of pharmacies, from 50 meters to 350 meters.Xie Zilong believes that the limit is in fact to protect backward, the survival of the fittest can put forward higher requirements for pharmaceutical companies.It is easier to open a shop, keep a good but not easyit is difficult to open a shop, in the pharmacy opening approval speed up at the same time, many pharmacies due to rent pressure, sparse customers, low profits and other reasons, not only did not develop new stores, even many existing stores are difficult to sustain, one after another closed stores.At present, most pharmacies survive or close down in the sandwich, although the number of pharmacies in China is increasing, but the contribution to the increment mainly comes from large chain drugstores.With the intervention of capital, the distribution of large chain pharmacies to the market has increased, which has led to the growth of the number of pharmacies.For small and medium-sized drugstore chains, especially single pharmacies, there is the possibility of resold or even closed down.The distance limit for pharmacies should have been lifted long agoaccording to Article 14, paragraph 3, of the previous Drug Administration Law of the People's Republic of China, which states: "The drug regulatory department shall, in addition to the conditions stipulated in Article 15 of this Law, follow the principles of reasonable layout and convenience for the purchase of medicines by the masses".In fact, in practice, the reasonable layout of this principle of understanding is not the same, controversial, in the specific implementation of the main approval of pharmacies, including chain stores when the opening of there are also great differences, and not consistent everywhere. Who will explain the reasonable layout? What is the rationale for a reasonable layout? The Regulations on the Implementation of the Drug Administration Law of the People's Republic of China do not give a specific and detailed explanation for this, nor do they make corresponding operational deployment provisions, which lead to various localities, individual and chaotic. In practice, it is difficult for the law to interpret and provide for it, since it is a matter of the market and not of the law. There is an industry view that: the opening of pharmacies, in addition to distance restrictions, there are similar drugstore total limit, pharmacy annual increase limit, pharmacy address change limit, etc. , are worth exploring and continuing reform. The greater the distance limit and the more , the less adequate the market competition may be. On the one hand, the distance limit for the opening of pharmacies has led to the inconvenience of buying medicines from the masses. On the other hand, start-up restrictions hinder competition among pharmacies, are not conducive to the increase of the chain rate of pharmaceutical retail enterprises, and are easy to form a regional monopoly. Insiders spit: distance limit is the biggest obstacle to the increase in retail chain rate. In a region with a low chain rate, a significant proportion of pharmacies are monos. If there is a distance limit, a monolithic pharmacy is in a relatively closed area to form a geographical monopoly, even if the price is a little higher, less service, attitude is less than there will still be a certain amount of passenger flow, demand will not generate momentum, competition will not form pressure. Chain enterprises are often new stores, due to distance restrictions lead to the opening of new stores, naturally can not improve the chain rate. And if the chain companies adopt the acquisition method, the drugstore has been opened will use their own has been obtained in a certain area of the administrative license, strange goods can live, sky-high prices, forcing the chain enterprises in a dilemma. (Pharmacy Manager)