Expressing serious concern over the future of small scale manufacturers across the country, the Confederation of Indian Pharmaceutical Industry (CIPI) has called upon urgent intervention from the government to review and amend the new Drug Price Control Order (DPCO) without any delay.

This demand comes in the wake of impending implementation of the final DPCO 2013, which the industry blames the government had notified without even issuing a draft notification for the perusal of the stakeholders. It is understood that the government in the last two years had conducted only three meetings with the stakeholders to discuss and deliberate over the much anticipated pricing policy.

T S Jaishankar, chairman, CIPI informed that the industry was not duly consulted by the government before coming out with such an important notification affecting the industry. In fact, he further stated that, whatever meeting that ever happened was just for formality sake, as no suggestions proposed by the industry was ever ceded while framing this order.

The association pointed out that DPCO 2013, issued by the Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP) in its present form supports market based pricing which is biased and drafted to benefit only big companies who manufacture in large volumes.

“Since we do not manufacture drugs in large volume, we are neither equipped nor ready to adopt this new DPCO. It is tailor-made to meet the demands of only the large scale manufacturers. We fear that, if the government intends to go ahead with its plan to implement the DPCO, as it is, it will eventually lead to utter state of disarray and huge loss to the industry, completely wiping out small scale manufacturers from the country,” Jaishankar cautioned.

It is understood that the association is at present, contemplating over different options available to them to address and counteract this issue. The new DPCO which came into effect from May 15, incidentally, brings 348 drug formulations under price control based on the simple average of market price of a product.