DoP urges pharma cos to report overcharging cases to NPPA for making policy interventions for prospective batch pricing

Mumbai, March 10, 2023 :

The Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP) has urged the pharmaceutical companies to study the number of cases of overcharging and report it to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) towards making policy interventions for prospective batch pricing.

Pharma industry has been requesting prospective batch pricing because whenever prices of scheduled drugs are revised downwards, the revised price is mandatorily made applicable with immediate effect.

“The pharma companies can enable the price change till Carrying and Forwarding Agents (C&F Agents), depot and stockists but have no control over 8 lakh chemists in the country leading to litigations even if one strip is found with the old rate with the chemist after 3 to 4 months. At least 15 days to one month is required to implement new price stickering on the new batch of medicines,” industry sources reveal.

According to Dr N Yuvaraj, joint secretary, DoP, “NPPA has some apprehensions due to wrong practices by some manufacturers in the past. It has been recommended not to enter data immediately in Form III in the next quarter. DoP will discuss with the NPPA whether manufacturers can disclose the stocks in hand with batch numbers to the NPPA on the Integrated Pharmaceutical Database Management System (IPDMS 2.0) website on the day the ceiling price is announced so that the complications are reduced.”

NPPA is also all set to bring other scheduled formulations also under price control following price control of 400 scheduled drugs based on a market based formula,” according to an official associated with the development.

Pharma industry has been asking for policy interventions to incentivise the MSMEs as there has been an increase in costs of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), excipients, packing material and transportation costs. These factors have been putting severe pressure on operating margins of the pharmaceutical companies.

Price of a key API like paracetamol which is a price-controlled formulation rose by 143 per cent last year whereas the ceiling price was revised by only 0.54 per cent as per the WPI in April 2021. In the last 9 years since Paracetamol is under price control, the API price has increased by more than 200 per cent to 300 per cent, but the corresponding ceiling price has been revised by only 3 per cent. Pharmabiz