In order to educate the pharma companies about filing the complicated application forms for revision of prices of pharma products, the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) is organising a workshop on July 15 in Hyderabad.

The NPPA has taken this initiative to educate the industry about filling the questionnaire and Form III/IV. The pharmaceutical companies have to send their applications to NPPA for approval or revision of price of Scheduled Drug Formulations and the price list under Form-III/IV and Form-V of Drug (Price Control) Order (DPCO) 1995.

The workshop will be conducted by the NPPA with the help of Pharmexcil. The NPPA has invited all the major pharma associations in the country like IDMA, OPPI, IPA, CIPI, BDMA and FOPE for the workshop. This will be a half-day workshop and the expenses of the workshop will be born by the NPPA.

However, the NPPA is not inviting the individual companies for the workshop. It will provide detailed training to the representatives of the pharma associations so that they can educate their respective members.

With the NPPA taking a proactive role in revising the prices of regulated drugs in the country, the filing of Form III/IV of the NPPA for price revision has become more frequent. The NPPA periodically revises the prices of drugs after scrutinising the price movements of both imported and domestically produced drug raw materials. It also revises the prices whenever there is a change in the tax slabs.

As the NPPA normally makes the suo-moto downward revision of the prices, the companies have to file the applications individually for the upward revision of the prices. Even though the companies wanted to file the revision applications for the upward revision of their products due to different reasons, they are unable to fill the forms due to its complicated nature. The workshop will provide a relief to the issue.

NPPA has introduced E-filing system for the applicant pharmaceutical companies to send their applications to NPPA for approval or revision of price.