The All India Organisation of Chemists and Druggists (AIOCD), the largest representative body of pharmaceutical traders in the country, is planning to have a consensus with the major pharmaceutical companies to bring in a uniform trade policy for marketing generic medicines.

The organisation will conduct a series of discussion with around a dozen top generic companies, within a month to finalise an agreement for setting up a common trade practice in the drug distribution chain. Though the demand to frame a uniform policy was raised by AIOCD for several years, it is for the first time the organisation is stepping forward to finalise the issue on a discussion table.

The decision was officially approved by the AIOCD in its recent executive committee meeting, with which the organisation will initiate talks with individual companies at first and may go to the extend of discussing the issues with the industry associations, if needed. The discussions will bring in a jointly acceptable settlement for the issues pertaining in current trade practices, according to A N Mohan, president, AIOCD.

"We are looking forward to a trade policy in which there will a uniformity in appointment of stockists and distributors, handling of MRP issues and various fair marketing practices. At present, there is no such agreement with any companies, though we were demanding the need of policy and were conducting discussions with individual companies for past several years," said Mohan.

In the absence of a uniform guideline or agreement for appointing distributors and decision on MRP, the companies are currently appointing any number of distributors with keeping options to terminate distribution links arbitrarily, he added. There are also issues pertaining in fixing up trade margins for generic drugs, which currently results in grudge between the company and its distributor.

The executive committee meeting held at the end of July also decided to demand uniform Value Added Tax (VAT) calculation structure in every part of the country. The decision comes in the backdrop of recent VAT amendment of Maharashtra government to switch over the tax collection system from single point to multi point taxation.