Beijing (CNS) – Two pharmaceutical companies in east China's Shandong province were fined over 6 million yuan for building a monopoly in a bulk drug.
Shuntong Medicine Limited Company and Huaxin Medicine Trade Limited Company unlawfully monopolized the bulk drug Compound Reserpine and jacked up the prices. The cost of the ingredient was driven up to as much as 2600 yuan per kilo for a product normally sold for 200 yuan per kilo before they controlled the supply, said Xu Kunlin, director of the Price Supervision and Anti-monopoly Bureau at the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).
The two medicine companies are in reality affiliated enterprises who collaborated to become the exclusive sales agents of the product. According to the NDRC, they signed their respective agreements with the last two enterprises in China capable of producing bulk supplies of Compound Reserpine.
Compound Reserpine, an antihypertensive agent, has been added to China's fundamental medicine category. Numerous patients rely on this medicine, consuming a total of 8 to 9 billion tablets per year.
Many pharmaceutical companies were pressured to stop production of the drug due to the inflated prices engineered by the monopoly, after incurring a loss of 60%-70%, said an unnamed official.
