With a view to further tightening the monitoring process of prices of non-scheduled formulations in the market, the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) has started collecting information directly from the drug manufacturers.

“NPPA has already taken initiative to collect information directly from the manufacturers. Almost 7,000 manufacturers have already been addressed to submit required information. Moreover, making a provision for filing of information online will further facilitate collection of information,” sources said.

Currently, the NPPA depends fully on samples collected by a single agency – IMS Health- to monitor and fix the prices as the agency has not sufficient staffed to gather samples from the market on its own. The new move is aimed at reducing the dependency on IMS in the long run.

Prices of non-scheduled drugs are fixed by manufacturers themselves without seeking the approval of Government or the NPPA. NPPA, however, regularly monitors the prices of non-scheduled formulations based on the data from IMS. Accordingly, if the price is increased beyond 10 per cent annually, the NPPA intervenes and penalizes the company for overcharging.

Following the suggestion from different quarters on the monitoring of the non-scheduled drug prices, the NPPA was also planning to involve more agencies to collect samples. Lack of independent official data has also been mentioned in many court cases when the overcharging issues came up.

Another proposal was to set up cells of NPPA in all the States, but the long pending proposal has finally been dropped by the Government. Besides, the NPPA also feels that the new Drug Price Control Order (DPCO), 2013, will make the monitoring of the prices better as there are enabling provisions for the companies to submit information.

Meanwhile, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Chemicals has recently asked the NPPA to device a mechanism to proactively monitor the prices. “The Committee had noted that the manufacturers have the advantage for fixing the prices of non-scheduled drugs without seeking the approval of the Government/NPPA and this mechanism does not provide any relief to the public, in case it was found that the prices of the drugs were fixed arbitrarily. The Committee, therefore, recommended that NPPA should devise a mechanism to proactively monitor the rise in prices of non-scheduled drugs so that the same does not go beyond the permissible limit,” it said.