The Ministry of Chemical and Fertilizers on 10th August 2021 has put a cap on Trade Margin of 42 select non-scheduled anti-cancer medicines under ‘Trade Margin Rationalization (TMR)’ Approach resulting in reduction up to 90% of Maximum Retail Price (MRP) of526 brands of these medicines.
The National Pharmaceuticals Pricing Policy (NPPP), 2012 prescribes the guidelines for regulation of prices of drugs and the key principles of price regulation are (i) essentiality of drugs (ii) control of prices of formulations and (iii) Market Based Pricing.
Based on NPPP, 2012 and subsequent Drugs (Prices Control) Order, 2013 (DPCO, 2013), National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) under the Department of Pharmaceuticals fixes the ceiling price of scheduled drugs specified in the first schedule of the DPCO, 2013 and monitors the prices of non-scheduled drugs.
NPPA has also brought 106 non-scheduled anti-diabetic and cardiovascular drugs under price control by invoking extraordinary powers in public interest.
Further, it monitors the ceiling price of the scheduled formulations to ensure that the MRP of such formulations are within the range of ceiling price and monitors non-scheduled formulations to ensure that their MRP does not increase by more than 10% during the preceding twelve months.
