The National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) is planning to list out all 74-bulk drugs that are currently under price control in appropriate therapeutic categories to have a better idea about the therapeutic areas that have been left out. The NPPA would then prepare itself another list where all these "left out therapeutic categories" would be figured.

The exercise is to make "price control" a more meaningful exercise. It would mark a change from the existing practice where price control on the drugs is on the basis of economic criteria and instead would, for the first time view drugs on the basis of "essentiality" or "life saving nature" rather than market presence.

It is known that the expert committee set up by the Department of Chemicals and Fertilizers to "examine the span of price control (including trade margin) in the light of the National Common Minimum Programme and the observations of the Supreme Court in the SLP No (C) 3668 / 2003, had in its preliminary meeting decided to call for such a segregation from the NPPA. NPPA is also to carry out the same exercise with regard to drugs that are likely to fall under price control as per criteria in Pharmaceutical Policy 2002 and by lowering threshold limits of Rs 25 crore and Rs 15 crore and of Rs 10 crore to Rs 5 crore.

The committee has asked ORG-MARG to start an exercise to collect data of sales from manufacturers / stockists directly to the institutions, hospitals, stockists etc, which at present is not reflected in the ORG monthly audit reports. It is known that ORG has already initiated a survey to collect the data of institutional sales from manufacturers / stockists on a sample basis and is under validation exercise.

The committee has also requested the ministry of health and family welfare to provide the details of all the health programmes managed by it, along with the list of the drugs used for treatment of these diseases and their supply / availability / procurement situation as well as budgetary support. On the issue of high trade margin of non-scheduled medicines and the printing of ex-factory prices on label of medicines, the committee sought the opinion of the Department of Legal Affairs.