Still short of a consensus on the whether to adopt cost-based or market-based pricing mechanism, the Group of Ministers (GoM) on pharmaceutical policy has reportedly agreed on the extent of price control to be implemented and promised to finalise the policy in the next 10 days.

However, with the crux of the problem - choosing a pricing mechanism - still remaining unsolved, the final policy is likely to be delayed further as the Government is planning to seek more time from Supreme Court, which had set a deadline of September 27 to spell out the policy.

After a meeting here on Thursday held mainly due to the pressure from the Supreme Court, the GoM head agriculture minister Sharad Pawar said, “our desire is to finalise everything in the next 8-10 days. By next weekend, we will finalise everything.”

The GoM, which broadly agreed to limiting price control to 348 medicines of the National List of Essential Medicines and their 614 dosages, will study more international models on pricing mechanism before taking a final view as still opinion divided on adopting the method.

It is learnt that the main issue before GoM was not the extent of regulation, but the mechanism to fix prices of essential medicines. However, the issue remained still complex and unresolved after different ministries stuck to divergent opinions. The Health Ministry continued to bat for cost-based mechanism which is supported by public interest organizations and health activists, the Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP) and Commerce Ministry stood for market-based mechanism.

“We need time to study how emerging countries like Mexico, South Africa, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka fix the prices of essential medicines. This data was not readily available,” Union Minister of State for Chemicals and Fertilisers Srikant Jena said.

Last week, the Supreme Court had criticised the government for failing to decide the long-pending drug pricing policy. The court had given the government two weeks to decide the policy, failing which it will pass an interim order.

It is expected that the Government will file an affidavit in the SC, seeking more time to finalise the policy grounds of studying the models in other countries.