The drug industry representatives involved in direct talks with the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) and the Cost Accounts Branch (CAB) of the Finance Ministry, with regard to the revision of the Conversion Cost (CC) and Packaging Charges (PC) norms have disagreed with the "conventional" approach of CAB towards calculating the production cost of the price controlled drug.

According to informed sources, the CAB is going by the rules of the "license raj era" which is not at all practical in the present day situations. Industry representatives feel that while NPPA is considerate enough to understand the real issues concerning the industry, CAB is not so accommodative.

"We have no complaints against NPPA. The authority is really open to our problems and has responded in a proactive manner. It's the CAB which is insisting on several conditions that are not practical in today's situations", they said.

When asked to elaborate, industry sources said that the insistence of CAB to consider the maximum production capacity of a drug manufacturing unit while calculating economy of scale is the most ridiculous of its conditions. The industry feels that CAB should take into consideration only "standard capacity" as the production facility is used for the manufacture of several drugs and not a single one. "The NPPA has been positive to all our suggestions. But CAB, which has been asked to do the job for NPPA, is the problem now", they opined.

It was decided to give a fresh deadline to the companies who were asked to furnish the data essential for revising the CC and PC norms. The companies will have to submit the data in the first week of March, it is learnt.

The companies involved are Alkem Laboratories, Apex Laboratories, Aristo Pharmaceuticals, Astral Pharmaceuticals, Aventis Pharma, Bio-Chem Pharmaceuticals, Blue Cross Laboratories, Encube Ethicals, FDC, Glenmark Pharmaceuticals, GSK, Govind Vishram, Indoco Remedies, Ind-Swift Laboratories, Intas Pharmaceuticals, IPCA Laboratories, J B Chemicals & Pharmaceuticals, Lupin, Makjai Laboratories, Maxim Pharmaceuticals, Medreich Sterilabs, Micro Labs, Olive Healthcare, Pfizer, Ranbaxy Laboratories, Umedia Labs, Unichem Laboratories, USV, Wockhardt, Wyeth Lederle and Zydus Cadila.