The major industry associations in the pharmaceutical sector are planning to hold joint deliberations on the merits and demerits of the new draft of the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Policy prepared and released by the Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP), and report to the department.

The associations including Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India (OPPI), Indian Drug Manufacturers Association (IDMA), Federation of Pharma Entrepreneurs (FOPE), and Confederation of Indian Pharmaceutical Industry (CIPI) are likely to join for the common meeting being planned for November 18 here to take a close look at the policy draft, sources said.

Apart from sending independent remarks about the policy, the stakeholders will also prepare a common set of recommendations to be submitted to the DoP which has invited comments from the industry and other concerned sections on the draft, sources said. This is expected to make the procedure easier for the department too.

The new draft that seeks to replace the now aborted National Pharma Policy 2006 aims at controlling the prices of 60 per cent of formulations, based on the national list of essential medicines prepared by the Union ministry of health. The draft says the policy, to be finalized in a month, will cover nearly all the 348 medicines in the list. Based on updated data, the list will be expanded to cover about 400 drugs to increase access and availability of essential medicines.

As per the initial response, the draft has gone down well with the industry in general. The suggestions like introducing market based pricing (MBP) instead of the cost based pricing (CBP) have found more takers in the industry. The system of taking the weighted average of the top three prices of a single ingredient medicine of a specified dosage to decide the ceiling price is also finding acceptance.

“The general feeling is that the DoP has done a balancing act in many ways. However, the close interactions by the industry associations will only bring out the finer and adverse points in the draft. The associations are also gathering inputs from their members ahead of sending in suggestions to the DoP on the subject,” an industry leader said.