The recovery of arrears in the case of overcharging continued to be slow, even as many small and medium scale companies chose to pay the differences in prices suo motto while big players like Cipla, the biggest defaulter, stayed put in legal battle with national price monitoring authority.

According to the latest figures released, the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) issued 24 more notices in the last two months, taking the total number of overcharging instances to 871 since its inception for a total amount of Rs.2574.96 crore as on September 30.

The recovery rate, however, continued to be slow. The NPPA collected Rs.28 lakh in the last two months, taking the total recovered amount to Rs.234.72 crore. In the last seven months, the total recovered amount is Rs.6.21 crore, largely because of the small and medium companies were opting to pay the overcharged prices without waiting for the notices from the regulator.

Companies like Sunview Biotech, Bhadra Pharma, Organic Pharmaceuticals, Centurian Labs, Integrated Labs, Aan Pharma Ltd, Trio Remedies, Alar Labs, Tauras Lab, Saint Michael Biotech and Zenith Healthcare were among in this category.

As far as the default list is concerned, Cipla which has gone to court in almost all cases, continues to be the leader of the pack, accounting for more than half of the total arrears due from the entire pharmaceutical industry.

Apart from Cipla, most of the big companies in the sector also have figured in the list and many of them have paid the arrears in several cases. They included Cadila, Ranbaxy, Dr Reddy’s Lab, Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline and Merck.

As per the previous list released by the NPPA as on July 31 this year, the total number of overcharging cases were 847 for a total claim of Rs.2462.83 crore. The total amount recovered till stood at Rs.234.44 crore.