Cheaper than vegetables
After the summer full of passion and enthusiasm, winter is finally approaching. Without a doubt, hoarding is the main cause of the slack in the herbal market.
It was reported that many villages changed their farming plan in 2010 because of the soaring prices of some medicinal herbs. For example, when travelling around in villages of Anguo, one could observe that nearly 80% of the farmland was cultivated with Rhizome Dioscorea, and the other 20% was mainly for herbs such as Platycodon grandiflorum and chrysanthemum.
However, the villagers were not happy with their harvest, because the prices of herbs dropped sharply and they could not even pay for labor, let alone recoup the costs.
As domestic collectors only target cheap products, the market medicinal herb is then trapped in a vicious circle. But medicine producers are happy to see this, because the price cuts will largely relieve their economic pressure.
Traditional patented drugs much cheaper?
When prices of medicinal herbs plummet, will the prices of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) patented drugs fall accordingly? The answer is no.
According to Shao Zhenxing, manager of the Information Department at zyctd.com, a professional TCM information website, the prices of medicinal herbs are on a downtrend and may continue to drop in the next five to eight years.
However, Shao also said the prices of patented drugs will not go down but rise instead. In the past few years, large TCM drug producers such as Beijing Tongrentang and Yunnan Baiyao have all hoarded their products, which resulted in a shortage of patent drugs in the market and thus pushed their prices higher. Such a trend will continue to exist even though the prices of raw materials are dropping.
But this is not a good thing, as higher prices are forcing patients to change their habits. People are buying less Chinese medicine and more Western medicine because it's cheaper.
