Industry had mixed reactions to the news that the Sharad Pawar-led Group of Ministers (GoP) had finally managed to extract the Cabinet’s approval for the much-beleaguered Draft National Pharmaceutical Pricing Policy 2011 (NPPP 2011).
As reported earlier, (http://bit.ly/SXJTNv) the GoM had to switch from the Weighted Average Price (WAP) to the Simple Average Price (SAP) as the basis for computing the price cap based on concerns of the Finance Minister P Chidambaram 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 that the Cabinet had approved the GoM’s draft policy after certain changes were made, Dr P V Appaji, Executive Director, Pharmexcil said that the SAP meant lower prices for consumers but would further strain the margins of drug companies. Even so, he felt that the GoM had tried to their best to balance the concerns of industry, Government as well as activists groups.
N R Munjal, Vice-Chairman cum Managing Director, Ind Swift Laboratories and Vice Chairman of Pharmexcil indicated that exports too could suffer if drug prices within the country are kept too low as many countries use a reference pricing method to fix the prices of medicines imported into their countries.
Other industry sources commented that while the draft policy in its current form was unfair to the industry and would further squeeze margins, it was important that the uncertainty end. Thus they are hoping that the Supreme Court approves of the Draft Pharma Pricing Policy in its hearing on November 27, paving the way for the Policy to finally come into effect.
EP News Bureau
- Advertisement -
