A proposed amendment to the four-year-old Drug Price Control Order (DPCO) aims to bring non-scheduled drugs under price control by changing the price setting method, a move that pharmaceutical companies say will be detrimental to the industry's growth and kill competition. Non-scheduled drugs are those that are outside the price-control regime. About 370 drugs are currently under price control.
The proposal by the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) and the Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP) suggests scrapping the current method of fixing the ceiling price of drugs on the National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM) by adopting the simple average of brands having market share of over 1 per cent and instead taking the simple average of all brands and generics. The Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA), a grouping of leading domestic drug companies, said such an amendment…
