The Central government’s reported move to merge the National Pharmaceutical Pricing authority (NPPA) and Department of Pharmaceuticals with health ministry has received mixed response from the industry circles.

On the one hand industry experts feel that, though the move is a good one when it comes to clubbing together all related departments under one ministry and thereby enable policy makers to take decisions faster and swifter, on the other, they expressed apprehensions on the government’s intention. They asked why is it merging only NPPA and DoP with health ministry leaving other departments like Ayurveda, Siddha, Homoeopathy and Unani under separate ministries.

According to Ravi Uday Bhaskar, director general of Pharmexcil, the move is a good as it will help the government to speed up decision making process. He also felt that reorganization at the highest level definitely indicates that there will be drastic changes that will be witnessed with regard to pharmaceutical and healthcare sectors in the coming days. “We expect that any move by the government should be in the interests of the pharmaceutical industry and the healthcare sector in the country,” observed the DG.

As the pharmaceuticals and healthcare are a huge and vast sector, spreading across various departments and ministries, it has become tough for the government to take up faster policy decisions with regard to development in pharma as well as healthcare. At present, the NPPA and DoP are under the ministry of chemicals and fertilisers, while a few other related departments are associated with health and commerce ministries. In view of this, the central government’s decision to shit these departments with the health ministry is significant.

“National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority and Department of Pharmaceuticals are very crucial and as the government is planning to bring in drastic changes with regard to price control it is viewed as a smart move. One has to wait and see, what will this transpire into and it will be too early to comment on its outcomes,” observed a senior official from BDMA.

Overall different experts from regulatory, healthcare, and pharma industry welcomed the move of the government to merge the NPPA and DoP with heath ministry. However, they also felt that other departments like Jan Aushadi, Ayush, and Herbals etc should also be brought under the ambit of health ministry so that a comprehensive healthcare policy can be developed which would be helpful both for the pharmaceutical industry and the healthcare sector in the country.