Pharma companies raise prices arbitrarily

This refers to the news item captioned, "Pharma cos raise prices arbitrarily" dated 10.4.2011 by Tahir Amin. The article carries some glaring misinformation and has attempted to portray the pharma industry as a villain. We feel strongly that the facts should be brought to the notice of your valued readers, and they are stated as follows:
The statement that pharma companies have significantly raised the prices of most medicines during the last one month is not true. The industry keeps getting accused every now and then of raising prices and creating shortages to make huge profits. Whereas, the glaring fact is that the government has not allowed any 'across-the-board' price increase since the last 3-4% in December 2001.
Your correspondent quoted the traders in different markets of Rawalpindi-Islamabad as accusing the pharma manufacturers, more specifically multinationals of allegedly increasing the prices of medicines including certain life-saving medicines. This is indeed a grossly exaggerated statement coming from a group, which is often accused of hoarding and black-marketing of medicines. We would like to emphatically state that the drugs prices are controlled by the Ministry of Health, and companies cannot increase any price without their approval.
Last year, price increase on certain products was allowed by the Ministry of Health as a "hardship" case. These products were mostly very low-priced and this resulted in illegal smuggling out to the countries in the region. The resultant shortage in the market forced the patients to buy at an exorbitant price. The examples given in the article relates to medicines, which are priced less than a rupee (50-70 paisas per tablet). A paan (betel leaf concoction) today costs 5 to 10 rupees and contains ingredients that are extremely harmful to health. It is not fair to expect the pharma companies, who have invested millions to manufacture high-quality products at ridiculously low prices, and continue making losses.
With the soaring prices of raw and packaging materials, the adverse exchange rate, rising cumulative inflation of 100 percent in the last 10 years, ballooning input costs have put the industry in a big crisis. God forbid if the pharma industry collapses life-saving medicines would disappear from the market, and the vacuum would be filled not only by higher priced smuggled medicines, but also by counterfeit and pirated products.
(The writer is executive director PHARMA BUREAU, KARACHI)