Minister of State for National Health Services, Regulations and Co-ordination Saira Afzal Tarar on Wednesday said that the new drug pricing policy would help lay down a transparent mechanism for price fixation and adjustment, besides increasing availability of the drugs in the local market and discouraging hoarding of life-saving drugs.
Addressing a press conference the minister said that the policy would also help manufacturers to predict prices of their drugs in advance and help them manage their business in a better way. The minister said the policy would be notified and enforced from next week. "We are also encouraging export of the medicines in the policy. If a manufacturer gets its medicines registered abroad, he will be exempted from local pricing formula," she added.
She said that prices of drugs would remain frozen till June 30, 2016 at current approved levels. Thereafter, annual increase in prices of scheduled drugs shall be restricted to 50 percent of Consumer Price Index (with a cap of 4 percent) and of non-schedule drugs to 70 percent of the CPI (with a cap of 6 percent). The minister said that drugs for human use would be divided in two categories in terms of pricing in the country. Drugs on essential medicines list, top 50 of most common use and drugs for treatment of Cancer, TB, Hepatitis, HIV, Thalassamia and Organ Transplant, biological and new chemical entities would be categorised as schedule drugs and rest of the drugs shall be categorised as non-schedule.
For the first time a concept of price reduction up to 30 percent on originator brands has been introduced with staggered annual reduction up to 10 percent every year if the drugs are costlier those in India and Bangladesh. This will help reduce prices of many drugs of common use for patients in the country, she said.
The minister said that prices of new drugs would be fixed on the basis of average prices in India and Bangladesh and if new drug was not available in these countries price shall be fixed at the lowest level of the developing countries which regulate drugs prices or wholesale prices in the UK, Australia and New Zealand.
"The prices of generics shall be fixed 30 percent less than the originator brand of new drug which will provide economic option to patients in Pakistan," she said. She said that prices of originator brands of new drugs shall be reduced after four years or when minimum three generics are available in the market, whichever is later. "Total reduction shall be 10 percent every year over a period of three consecutive years," she said, adding that the prices of generics of these drugs will be reduced correspondingly and minimum price difference between prices of originator brands and generic will be maintained at 15 percent.
Production of lower priced drugs shall be encouraged and annual increase in their prices shall be automatic subject to the condition that it does not exceed Consumer Price Index, she said. The minister said that production of orphan drugs would be encouraged, besides export of high quality drugs to developed world. "A transparent mechanism has been devised to decide justified hardship cases of the industry to keep the drugs available in the market," she said. The minister said that a monitoring mechanism would be devised with the co-ordination of the provincial health authorities to ensure that drugs are not sold in market on prices higher than fixed prices.
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