The National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) has notified the revised ceiling price of 438 scheduled formulations. According to media reports, this revision has been done to correct an anomaly that took place while calculating the revised prices based on the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) increase of 12.1218 percent.
According to a notification, the prices of these scheduled formulations have been increased by 0.01 per unit. The ceiling prices for the scheduled formulations are revised with effect from April 1, 2023.
It has also notified the revised price for Bare Metal Stents, with a marginal price increase of 0.01 paise. It is noteworthy that the Authority has revised the ceiling prices of scheduled formulations based on the WPI for the year 2023 through various notifications on March 31, 2023.
However, some of the companies approached the Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP) with review applications stating that while revising the ceiling prices in these notifications, the ceiling price for all formulations has been incorrectly rounded down by the Authority rather than to the nearest zero.
The Authority, following this, noted that in the past, the ceiling prices for formulations have been revised by considering rounding off up to two decimal points, that is the second decimal point rounded off based on the third decimal figure.
However, the same practices were not followed for the year 2023 inadvertently, said the Authority, and NPPA while revising the ceiling prices has ignored the third digit after the decimal point.
“This has resulted in lower/decreased ceiling prices for some formulations by Rs 0.01 per unit,” it observed.
The NPPA has revised 905 scheduled formulations including 651 fixed under the National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM) 2022 and 254 fixed under earlier NLEMs, based on the change in WPI of 12.1218 per cent with effect from April 1, 2023.
“The Authority deliberated upon the matter in detail and it was decided that ceiling prices were notified vide SO no. 1568 (E) to 1580(D) dated March 31, 2023 may be amended in respect of those formulations where non-consideration of third decimal figure has resulted in lower/decreased ceiling price for some formulations by Rs. 0.01 per unit,” said the Authority.
Since the end of last year, the NPPA has been working on revising the ceiling prices of scheduled formulations. The ceiling price revision is following the revision of Schedule 1 of the Drugs (Price Control) Order, 2013 replacing NLEM 2015 with NLEM 2022, notified by the Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP) on November 11, 2022.
In July last year, the drug price regulator in July, this year, said that it has fixed ceiling price of over 900 scheduled formulations. This include those based on NLEM 2022 and other NLEMs and later clarified that the prices have seen a reduction even after an increase based on the WPI increase of 12.1218 per cent with effect from April 1, 2023.
