Newly appointed chairman of the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) C P Singh has urged all the stakeholders including the industry to address the crucial issue like inter-brand price differences and control over launch prices.

“We would thus seek the cooperation and support of pharma manufacturers, industry associations, State Governments, voluntary organizations, NGOs and all other stakeholders in the endeavour and would like them all to ponder over ticklish issues afflicting the industry such as inter-brand price differences, differences in prices of imported and indigenously manufactured formulations and better control on launch prices,” he said.

The Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP) is also in the process of finalizing the “National Pharmaceutical Pricing Policy (NPPP)”. In the emerging scenario NPPA hopes to serve the consumer better while also encouraging the pharma industry to produce adequate quantity of quality products, the chairman said in a public message to the stakeholders.

“NPPA has completed about 14 years of its active role in contributing towards making available pharmaceutical products at reasonable prices. Our motto is ‘to serve the consumers while also encouraging the pharma industry to produce adequate quantity of quality drugs at reasonable and affordable prices to meet the country’s rising demand’. This also requires a close watch on price movement of formulations, which may not necessarily fall under the controlled category,” the message said.

“Only about 10 per cent of the Indian population today has some sort of health insurance cover or support by Government. Therefore, the Government has to adopt price control and monitoring mechanism as a social responsibility. In the process of price fixation and monitoring, NPPA regularly interacts with various stakeholders including State Drug Controllers and State Health Departments,” he said.

He also pointed out that the agency had taken various initiatives such as online filing of applications for fixation/revision of formulation prices and online submission of price lists in Form V as per DPCO,1995; and consumer awareness campaigns through print and electronic media.