China's Bureau of Price Supervision and Anti-Monopoly has punished five domestic pharmaceutical enterprises on price monopoly agreement.
This is the first anti-monopoly case after the country opened up national drug pricing. Five companies, including two from the municipalities of Chongqing and Shanghai -- have been ordered to pay fines of five to eight percent of total sales in 2014. Altogether, that's nearly 4 million yuan or 550 thousand US dollars.
"This is the first case of monopoly agreement we have investigated in the medicine sector. The value of this case itself is not significant, but it's typical. Not only was it horizontal, but there was action in collusion with the negotiation pricing problem, as well as division sales area, and the issue of market division," said Lu Yanchun, deputy director of Anti-Monopoly Bureau, NDRC.
