By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, DEC 19, 2014: THE Minister for Chemicals and Fertilisers, Mr Ananth Kumar, has stated that 175 drugs and formulations have been added to the Drug Control and their prices were reduced. Replying to a debate on the Calling Attention Motion in Lok Sabha yesterday, he said, it is unprecedented that on May 26, the number of formulations and drugs were 440 and today the total number of drugs under the Drug Price Control is 617. He said the entire credit for this initiative goes to the Prime Minister's concern for the people of India.

He said out of these drugs whose prices have gone down, 47 drugs are for cancer, 22 drugs are for Diabetes; 19 drugs are for AIDS and 84 drugs are for cardio-vascular category for which price control has been added. The Minister asserted that that there are no drugs whose price can be said to have increased, leave alone prices sky-rocketing.

Mr Ananth Kumar pointed out that one of the important leaders of the Opposition Party was campaigning that the price of one of the cancer drugs (Glivec) is Rs.8,452.38 for 30 tablets has been raised to Rs.1,08,000/-. The Minister said that unfortunately such misinformation also got reported in the newspapers.

The Minister informed the House that according to new initiatives in the Ministry, every pharmaceutical company has to file Form 5 every quarter according to The Integrated Pharmaceutical Database Management System. More than 600 companies are already filing these forms. Through these forms his Ministry will be monitoring their quantity, quality, price and all the parameters. One more mechanism the Government of India is conceptualizing and thinking of implementing is setting up of a Price Monitoring Resource Unit in each State. This will be a very progressive step in the direction of price control, he added.

Mr Kumar asserted that the Government of India is not at all intervening in the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority. That is an independent authority. There is the DPCO 2013 under which it works. All the powers of Government of pricing according to Essential Commodities Act have been delegated to it. The Authority has brought in price control for 108 formulations on June 10.

He said that the price control continues, and there is no reversal. Because of that continuance of price control, pharmaceutical companies have gone to the court and there is no stay order also on the reduced prices.