Medical Devices Procurement Go back »

2020-10-12 | All chapters

Based on the Foreign Investment Law, the various government policies for supporting enterprise development shall equally apply to foreign-invested enterprises and domestic companies.

However, procurement policies promulgated in many regions encourage hospitals to purchase devices, and clearly stipulate or in practice require the purchase of ‘domestic brands’. For instance, when Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region approved 57 local hospitals to source Type-B large medical equipment in July 2019, the licence clearly required them to purchase domestic brand equipment.

After a series of communications with the State Administration for Market Regulation, relevant departments of the Guangxi Provincial Government and Delegation of the European Union to China, on 29th November 2019, the European Chamber received from Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region Department of Commerce that:

“In the allocation licence of the Guangxi Health Commission, ‘domestic brand’ refers to products domestically made in China. Products invested in and produced by foreign investors or Sino-foreign joint ventures within the territory of China and products produced by wholly domestic-owned enterprises are equally qualified to participate in the competition. No discriminative policy is implemented.”

Read more on this advocacy success story, please click here.

For more information on the Healthcare Equipment Working Group, please click here.