Ministers will look into the 2006 draft pharma policy again.
The Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers has sought the opinion of the law ministry on plans to expand the span of price control to all drugs mentioned in the National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM).
The move comes after Union Chemicals and Fertilizers Minister, M K Alagiri, wanted to see if the “public interest” clause enshrined in the existing drug law could be invoked to put all essential medicines under price control.
The National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA), the drug price regulator, fixes prices of 20 per cent of the Rs 60,000 crore worth medicines that are sold in the country annually. The industry is free to fix prices of the balance 80 per cent medicines, though there is a 10 per cent cap on price increase in a year.
The ministry has now asked its legal counterpart to see if it can bring the 354 NLEM drugs also under direct price control. The move, if successful, will see NPPA having a say in prices of about 17,000 specific packs of medicines worth approximately Rs 7,000 crore.
NPPA had invoked the public interest provision under DPCO (Drug Price Control Order) 1995 to bring I V Fluid under price control a few years ago. The minister wanted to see if prices of NLEM drugs could also be fixed the same way.
The Supreme Court had, in a directive that set aside a national pharma policy in 2003, wanted the government to formulate appropriate criteria to bring all essential and life-saving medicines under price control.
The government’s attempt to follow the SC directive resulted in the formation of a draft pharma policy in 2006, which is yet to be finalised. The group of ministers (GoM) headed by Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar that looked into the draft policy during the previous UPA government has been re-constituted to consider the draft policy. The GoM is yet to call its first meeting.
