Govt to decide on drug policy after monitoring committee's report

New Delhi, Nov 14 (UNI) The divide between pharma companies and the government over the drugs pricing policy does not seem to be bridging with Union Chemical and Fertilisers Minister Ram Vilas Paswan announcing that a course of action towards it will be decided after the 14-member committee sumbits its report on November 30.

Expressing his anguish over the non-implementation of pricing policy voluntarily undertaken by the pharma companies, he said that ''the ball is now in the industry's court''.

''Based on the report to be given by the committee on November 30, we will put a draft policy before the Cabinet so that a future course of action can be decided upon,'' Mr Paswan told reporters here.

He said of the 6,000 companies, which came forward for reduction in the prices of generic drugs, only 11 companies have till now followed the cut and the generics drugs were available in the markets at increased prices even after the October 2 deadline.

He reiterated his warning that the government will not hesitate to take stringent actions against those who back track from their commitment to reduce prices of essential drugs.

The pharmaceutical industry, however, echoed that the implementation of price-cut in generic drugs, which constitute only five per cent of the domestic medicine market, will be implemented on the new stock of drugs and not the existing ones.

The industry submitted a list of 886 drugs to the government and said that they would impose a cap of 15 per cent on the wholesale margins and 35 per cent on the retail margins.

Nicholos Piramal Director (Strategic Alliances and Communications) Swati Piramal said, ''It takes time to fill in the pipeline with new drugs. The October 2 deadline of pricing and bi-lingual labelleing of the medicines was for the manufacturing-levels and most of the big companies have implemented it. Of the 25,000-odd pharma companies in the country, only the major ones could implement the cut as it requires incurring of huge costs.'' In view of the much-needed R&D investments, the industry also demanded enhancement of tax incentives to cover depreciation on investments made in land and building for dedicated research facilities.

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