The National pharmaceutical Pricing Authority has started scrutinizing the prices of scheduled drugs being cleared by the competent Excise and Customs authorities to see if the stipulated 4.58 per cent reduction was being effected on MRP following the 8 per cent cut in excise duty on all pharmaceutical products in the union Budget.

In the non-scheduled category, a few companies have already responded to the guidelines by the NPPA by cutting the prices by 4.58 per cent, as desired by the regulator, and more companies were expected to follow the suit, sources said.

As the new excise duty came into effect from March 1 and NPPA notified the prices for all formulations under the scheduled category on March 3 with immediate effect, all new batches of packs manufactured and cleared thereafter were under monitoring already.

``In the non-scheduled drugs segment, the NPPA issued guidelines to the manufacturers to pass on the benefits to the consumers. The new batches will take five to six weeks to hit the markets. The regulator will then start collecting samples as per this to find out the defaulters,'' sources said.

The NPPA, in the guidelines dated March 10, had asked the drug makers to submit the revised price lists at the earliest after reducing the MRP. NPPA would be monitoring the limit of 10 per cent increase in prices per annum of these decontrolled packs based on the reduced MRP for all formulations cleared by the authorities after March 1.

Based on the reduction on excise duty from 16 to 8 per cent and abatement rate from 42.5 to 35.5 per cent, the NPPA had worked out the margin of 4.58 per cent to be effected on MRP on both the scheduled and non-scheduled drugs. This was binding on all formulations except in the categories of packs where no excise duty was being actually paid.

After the general budget announced the decrease in excise duty, the drug manufacturers have been reportedly waiting for the NPPA to work out the margin, instead of effecting reduction in MRP by own their.