The appointment sets in motion the process of setting up a five-member body to monitor and regulate drug pricing in the country.
The four other members will be appointed later after the chairman takes over, official sources said. They will be bureaucrats as well as industry experts. The NPPA is expected to become operational by December. It will be an autonomous body within the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers and will be both a price fixing body as well as an appellate authority.
The government has made a budgetary provision of Rs 70 lakh for 1996-97 to set up the secretariat of the NPPA. The secretariat will be located in Delhi and is expected to take over all pricing decisions that the government has kept pending.
The formation of the NPPA was central to the new drug policy of 1994. The industry has been sore with the government for announcing new pricing standards without setting up an independent authority as promised in the policy.
Several deadlines set for the formation of the NPPA have been missed. This had given rise to doubts about whether the body would be formed at all. The doubts grew stronger after reports that the National Front government intended to review the entire gamut of drug pricing and fate of the body depended on this review.
The NPPA will fix prices of controlled drugs, review pricing decisions, decide on formulations meant to be under control and out of it. Its broad focus is to oversee the provisions of the Drug Price (Control) Order.
The drug industry is eagerly awaiting the arrival of the NPPA as they have a long list of complaints over the drug pricing mechanism, which is now enforced by the ministry of chemicals and fertilisers.