New Delhi, 8 Aug 2013: The government on Wednesday told pharmaceutical companies that pending the decision of the Delhi High Court, new drug price control orders (DPCO), as per the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Policy 2012, would have to be complied with.
In a meeting with small and medium pharma companies in Mumbai, officials of the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) and the department of pharmaceuticals, however, agreed to give companies a thirty-day extension on labelling. Which means, while drugs will have to be sold at revised prices as submitted to NPPA, old labels could continue for another month. Revised drug prices, calculated as a simple average of all brands of a particular drug with a market share of at least 1 per cent were to have come into effect from July 29, but a clutch of pharmaceutical companies have moved court challenging the DPCO. The meeting in Mumbai was to sort out some of those issues.
"The matter (of the new DPCO) is in the Delhi High Court and the court has not stayed the order. In fact it has asked drug companies to submit the new price lists. So by implication the court does not disagree with the order. We have told pharmaceutical companies that they will have to comply. Only we are giving a thirty day extension to sort the labelling logistics issues," CP Singh, NPPA chairman told The Indian Express.
The government, according to sources present in the meeting was in no mood to budge on the issue of the pricing formula either. Companies have objected to clubbing of all brands of a particular company with requisite market share in arriving at the revised price but the pharmaceuticals department held its ground with a stand that since all brands comprise the same molecule there is no need to revise this formula.
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