Small scale drug units have asked the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority to consider actual costs while revising norms for Conversion Cost (CC), Packing Charges (PC), Process Loss (PL) and Packing Material (PM) for the year 2008. NPPA has sought detailed information regarding these costs from various segments of the industry.

The NPPA has sent letters to Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India (OPPI), Indian Drug Manufacturers Association (IDMA) and Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA) for product information including data on any new product and suggestions. The authority has sent a detailed questionnaire for collecting cost data and other information from various manufacturers and formulators for the annual cost revision.

However, the request of the small scale industry to scale up the cost assessment in view of the cost increase in manufacturing of pharmaceutical products has not been considered by the authority in the past annual revisions, according to Confederation of Indian Pharmaceutical Industry (CIPI). The confederation would also request the authority to bring in the revisions in force at least in the middle of the year.

"The implementation of Schedule M and the standards like US FDA have increased the cost of production from top to bottom. The authority should make substantial increase in the CC, PC, PL and PM norms," said T S Jaishankar, chairman, of CIPI.

The confederation may seek a 100 per cent increase in these costs from the current charges, pointing out that the labour cost has increased four fold while the cost of excipients and the capital equipment cost have increased several times in the recent years. Last year, the NPPA has revised the charges with 10 percent increase in cost. "Companies which produce huge volume of products may not be affected with the increase in manufacturing cost, but it is the small scale industry which suffers in the hike in expenditure," he added. He also said that the industry may benefit more, if the authority can introduce the new norms at least in the second half of the year, unlike the previous years.

According to the NPPA notification, the information and data in respect of all pharma units manufacturing and marketing formulations should be furnished in a soft copy on Compact Diskette (CD) along with duly the signed hard copy and copies of the annual reports for the last two years (2005-06 and 2006-07), within January 31, 2008.