India: "Price Control On 75 More Drugs"

6 October 1997

Within the next three months, about 75 new drugs are due to be broughtunder India's controversial Drug Price Control Order of 1995, the Financial Express has reported.

The DPCO has so far fixed the prices of 76 bulk drugs on the basis of their turnover and market share statistics in 1990. About 60 new drugs which are now imported are due to be added to the list, on the basis of the exclusion criteria mentioned in the DPCO, says the FE. Excluded antibiotics like norfloxacin and ciprofloxacin may be added because their turnover has shot up in recent years and some do not fulfil the competition criteria. Drugs that could be excluded include the antibacterials sulphadiazine and sulphamethoxazole, plus ibuprofen and the antiasthma treatment theophylline. New-generation products such as cefotaxime and cefaclor, introduced after 1990, may no longer fall under the exclusion norm.

Seven-Year-Old Data The FE, which quotes unnamed "well-placed sources" in the Ministry of Chemicals and Petrochemicals, says that the move was taken by the Minister, Mr Arunachalam, in order to update the database on the basis of which drugs are brought under or taken out of price control. Mr Arunachalam has reportedly expressed his concern that the pricing regime is based on seven-year-old data, and that no concrete efforts have been made to collect the latest figures, despite the fact that much has changed during the interim period.

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