Violation of the Drug Price Control Order by the pharmaceutical companies has been a serious challenge for the government ever since the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority was established by the Union ministry of chemicals & fertilizers in 1997. Pharma companies tend to overcharge not only drugs listed in the scheduled category but also medicines outside DPCO. NPPA has been tracking these violations especially after the notification of DPCO,1995 covering 74 drugs and their formulations. Several of these overcharging cases against a number of large and medium scale companies are still being fought at different courts in the country. With the announcement of the new DPCO in 2013 covering formulations of 348 drugs, NPPA has a much bigger task in regulating and monitoring drug prices. Circumvention and violation of the DPCO provisions have been already started by the pharma companies under the new DPCO also and the task is going to be much harder for the regulator. The total number of drug price violation cases in the country stands at 1018 for an amount of Rs 3381.91 crore as on March 2014. The overcharged amounts during the year 2013-14 alone is Rs. 385 crore. And the companies have overcharged consumers to the extent of Rs. 417 crore on sales of various medicines under the new DPCO during calendar year 2014.
NPPA has been finding it extremely tough to track price violations and recover the overcharged amounts from the companies because it did not have a network of offices and also on account of existing judicial process in the country. NPPA being a Central body with a limited number of staff only in Delhi and without enforcement powers it is finding difficult to implement the prices once fixed. For effective enforcement of price control of medicines in the country, an extensive price monitoring machinery with the support of state drug control departments is necessary. A proposal to set up drug price monitoring cells of NPPA in state drug control administrations for tracking price violations was thus put up to Planning Commission some years ago. The proposal has been now accepted and the NPPA is going to have these dedicated cells within the office of the state drug departments very soon. Expenditure required for the manpower, amenities and other infrastructural costs will be borne by the NPPA and the state governments will have to provide the space for setting up the office within the state drug regulatory office. These cells are expected to closely work with the state drug regulators to find overcharging from the retail outlets. The officials heading the cell will be required to report their findings on price violations to the NPPA directly. Detection of price violations by these cells has to be faster in the interest of the patient community so that they are not made to pay in excess of what is fixed for several years as is happening now.