The National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) has found that maximum retail prices of 103 formulation packs have been hiked beyond the permissible limit of 10 per cent over an year. NPPA had instructed the companies in January last that their annual hike in formulation prices should not be more than 10 percent. The companies, which have hiked prices more than 10 per cent, have been issued notices.

The agency is waiting for the reply by the companies before fixing the prices and asking them to comply with it. "We have just sent notices and waiting for replies and are sending second set of notices. It is a massive task of tracking the prices of packs. During the month of March alone, we had to go through 53,000 packs," said an official.

With this, show cause notices have been slapped on 331 drug packs so far and manufacturers under scan included big names like Dr Reddy's, Emcure, Torrent and Cadilla of them, 52 formulation packs were found to have increased price beyond 10 per cent. So far 29 companies have responded by reducing the prices, sources said.

The NPPA is already handling 70 court cases filed by pharma companies in different parts of the country with respect to recovery of overcharged amount. An estimated overcharged amount of Rs 1318.64 crore was thus being contested by the companies. The agency has recovered so far Rs 81.14 crore, sources said.

During the year of 2006-07, it has fixed or revised the prices of 1020 formulations and 776 were of them were done on suo-moto basis. During 2005-06, it had fixed the prices of 1018 formulations, including 803 suo-moto cases, making a huge increase from 332 formulations during the year of 2004-05, the official said.

Till January 2007, the NPPA was issuing notices to all companies who have hiked the prices above 20 per cent or more in a year. This limit was brought down to 10 per cent this year.