The Department of Pharmaceuticals has assured the Supreme Court that it will soon notify the new pharmaceutical pricing policy.
Upon this assurance, the Supreme Court (SC) deferred the hearing of the public interest litigation (PIL) on the pharma pricing policy to December 12 acceding to a petition filed by the Department to allow it two weeks time (from November 27) to notify the new policy. The SC will review the terms and clauses of the policy after it is notified.
Industry had mixed reactions when the Sharad Pawar-led Group of Ministers (GoP) got the Cabinet’s approval for the Draft National Pharmaceutical Pricing Policy 2011 (NPPP 2011).
As reported earlier, (http://bit.ly/SXJTNv) the GoM switched from the Weighted Average Price (WAP) to the Simple Average Price (SAP) as the basis for computing the price cap based as the Finance Minister P Chidambaram opined that the former would take the average price of the more expensive medicines and would therefore not serve the purpose of bringing down medicine prices.
Commenting on the news (http://bit.ly/Qxz9tU), industry sources had commented that while the draft policy with the SAP method was unfair to the industry and would further squeeze margins, it was important that the uncertainty end.
EP News Bureau – Mumbai