Finmin nod clears decks for market-based drug pricing

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fe Bureau: New Delhi, Nov 22 2012, 03:48 IST

The national drug pricing policy, which had got stuck with a series of objections raised by the finance ministry, was finally approved by an inter-ministerial panel on Wednesday. Sources said finance minister P Chidambaram who attended Wednesday’s meeting as a special invitee gave his green signal to fix the prices of essential drugs on a market-based approach, with certain modifications. The Cabinet is likely to discuss the policy on Thursday.

The finance ministry has also softened its stance on the span of price control by agreeing to strictly stick to the National List of Essential Drugs (NLEM), sources said. This clearly implies that combination drugs using NLEM ingredients and strengths not mentioned in the list may remain out of the price net. However, sources indicated that some fundamental changes have been made to the main formula recommended earlier by the group of ministers led by agriculture minister Sharad Pawar.

However, Pawar declined to give details, stating, “We have resolved all issues. There were certain issues raised by my colleagues. We discussed them in depth and we have come to an agreed formula... I think we will be able to take Cabinet's approval before November 27.”

Earlier, the GoM had decided to fix the prices of essential drugs based on the weighted average price (WAP) of all brands with over 1% market share in any therapeutic category. Sources said that at Wednesday's meeting, the WAP formula may have been changed to simple average of all drugs in a therapeutic category. This would drag down

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