The national drug price regulator National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) has issued the Compendium of Notified Ceiling Prices of Scheduled Drugs 2015 which will provide information related to notified ceiling prices in respect of scheduled drugs.

Apart from serving as a compendium of notified ceiling prices, it is also expected to help in propagating the NLEM, which is basically aimed at promoting scientific and rational use of medicines that is both clinically-effective and cost-effective.

NPPA officials said that the Compendium has been brought out with the objective of disseminating information related to notified ceiling prices in respect of scheduled drugs to all stakeholders, particularly consumers and consumer welfare organisations/NGOs; manufacturers, including importers and marketers of pharmaceuticals products; stockist/ distributors, dealers and retailers; doctors and public health experts; and enforcement functionaries.

The Compendium gives details about the ceiling prices of all the scheduled drugs included in the Drugs Price Control Order (DPCO) 2013, notified by the NPPA. At present the DPCO 2013 contains 680 scheduled drug formulations spread across 27 therapeutic groups, which effectively comes to 628 scheduled drug formulations if net those appearing in more than one therapeutic group.

As on date, the NPPA has fixed and notified the ceiling prices with respect to 509 scheduled formulations, apart from notification of annual WPI-linked revision whenever due. With regard to the remaining 119 scheduled drug formulations, 17, which are common to both DPCO 1995 and DPCO 2013, are not yet due for revision. With respect to the remaining 102 scheduled drug formulations, the NPPA has not been able to fix the ceiling prices due to non-availability of corresponding market-based price to retailer (PTR) data.  Efforts are continuously on for this purpose, and those ceiling prices will be notified as soon as the said data is available, NPPA officials said.