Southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region has sold one billion yuan (US$120.4 million) worth of Tibetan medicinal products in the past five years, both in China and abroad.

Tibetan medicine, made using modern techniques according to secret traditional Tibetan recipes, is an economic pillar of Tibet.

The Qizheng Tibetan Medicines Group said that to date, it has set up 25 marketing branches nationwide and has developed markets in the United States, Canada, Russia and the ASEAN countries.

The varieties of the Tibetan medicines and the production scale are expanding. The traditional Tibetan medicines have proved effective for the treatment of difficult and complicated illnesses.

According to the regional department of public health, Tibet has developed 18 Tibetan medicine producing businesses with a total annual output of 15 million tons.

Fourteen varieties of Tibetan medicine have been included on the State protection list for Chinese medicine, and 24 varieties were listed in the Catalogue of the State Basic Medicines Varieties.

In addition, some 218 varieties of the Tibetan medicinal materials have been taken as the State standards.

More than 20 trademarks for Tibetan medicine have been registered in industrial and commercial administration departments. And 20 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities have brought the Tibetan medicines into their public medical systems.

By 2004, 18 Tibetan medicine enterprises had passed the State GMP certification. The output value of the region's Tibetan medicines enterprises topped 400 million yuan (US$48.1 million) in 2004, up 20 percent on the year. 

(Xinhua News Agency March 7, 2005)