More staff at China FDA will help propel market to half trillion dollars by 2020

A report from market analyst GlobalData finds that the Chinese pharmaceutical market is expected to grow at an annual rate of 30% up to 2022, pushing the size of the market up to $573 billion.

The authors say that the extraordinary growth in China, already the second largest pharmaceutical market in the world, will be driven by a large population, increasing incidence of chronic diseases and growing investments in healthcare sector.

GlobalData points to a number of obstacles, however, such as drug approval delays and a lack of patent linkage rules which will likely hold back further growth in the near-term, and which are described as “a concern for foreign companies operating in the country.”