To rein in the private sector pharmaceutical companies from reckless profit earning and to make available medicines at reasonable prices, the Federation of Medical and Sales Representatives' Associations of India (FMRAI) has asked the Centre to form a single public sector company comprising of all the public sector drug units owned by Central government.

In a letter circulated to the Members of Parliament, the FMRAI said there is an urgent need to form a single company of all public sector medicine companies on the lines of other developing nations where public sector medicine companies are operated by a single company and looked after by the central government.

The FMRAI regretted that though the pharmaceutical PSUs have been a landmark achievement for development of pharmaceutical industry in India, due to the government policies and shifting priorities the PSUs in the medicine sector were becoming non-viable units.

Hindusthan Antibiotics Ltd. (HAL) and Indian Drugs and Pharmaceuticals Ltd. (IDPL) had been successfully producing and supplying medicines at cheaper price. These PSUs have compelled the multinational companies to lower prices of their medicines in India and later on these multinational companies were also compelled to establish manufacturing plants in our country, the FMRAI letter said.

The most important task before the government now is to release appropriate fund and to overcome hassles experienced in the past operation. Now these two big PSUs operate as separate autonomous companies which in many cases are found counter productive. It is now needed to form a single company by merging all government pharmaceutical PSUs.

The formation of such a company will help make a uniform and prompt fiscal planning and disbursement of investments and will also centralise product planning which will eliminate unnecessary competition among the PSUs. It will also help in development and utilisation of technology in proper way and will go for technical collaboration or joint ventures.

The formation of such a big government company will come in handy for availing WHO projects for medicine manufacturing and procurement which will otherwise go to the private sectors now and can also develop a uniform marketing and distribution machinery which will reduce the cost considerably. It will also ease monitoring and planning and also to face effectively the market competition with private sector.