Goa Pharmaceutical Manufacturers' Association (GPMA) wants National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) to seriously consider relaxing the 10 per cent ceiling on formulation prices of decontrolled drugs. The pharmaceutical companies are increasingly facing pressure in manufacturing medicines in the wake of the steadily rising input costs.

As per the NPPA guidelines, only a 10 per cent hike in the prices of any non-scheduled formulations is allowed within a span of 12 months. GPMA says that this is highly inadequate and this ceiling was bought in around eight to 10 years back when the market conditions were different.

According to A K Burman, president, GPMA it is high time the government revised the ceiling as per the changing trend in the market which reflects high inflation rate. “The current ceiling of 10 per cent is not workable under the current market conditions where the inflation rate is far higher than it used to be when the policy was adopted. Considering the current ground reality, the government should seriously think about changing the ceiling of the formulations as per the current requirement, so that industry is also able to sustain in this highly competitive market.”

He further pointed out that, today a company has to deal with increased transportation cost, power cost, increase in statutory compliance fees, rise in labour cost including an increase in the dearness allowance (DA) by more than 15 per cent putting a huge pressure on the manufacturers. Expressing concern over the fate of the industry if the situation persists, GPMA cautioned that in the foreseeable future there will be an alarming trend in which the companies will be forced to stop manufacturing the same, leading to shortage of many formulations in the Indian market.

Another disturbing trend that is fast catching up is that, many Indian manufacturers are moving towards exports for both financial as well as higher growth prospects, which is in turn is affecting the domestic market.  Taking all these into consideration, the association stressed that it is now upon the government to address these issues by adopting a workable solution in this matter through a fair and market analysed budget.