Medicine prices have not been arbitrarily increased by the pharmaceutical companies but by the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) following Drug Pricing Policy 2018 giving pharmaceutical companies first price increase after 18 years, said sources in the pharma industry. According to document made available, DRAP issued an SRO 34 (I)/2019 on 10th January 2019 with the approval of the Federal Government to increase maximum retail prices by nine percent for the drugs that were given some increase under hardship cases category in 2018, and 15 percent for the remaining drugs.
Earlier on 31st December 2018, the DRAP issued SRO 1608(I)/2018, SRO 1609(I)/2018 and SRO 1610(I)/2018 to notify price increase of 128, 67 and 889 medicines respectively under hardship cases for which the manufacturers were demanding price increase since long as they were unable to continue the production of drugs due to incurring heavy losses on them, industry sources opined.
"It's unfair to blame the companies for increasing prices on their own when the government itself approved the hike in prices acknowledging the hardships pharmaceutical companies are facing," said an official of a pharmaceutical manufacturing company, adding: "Inflation has reached 9.4 percent, highest in last five years, whereas rupee has depreciated by more than 13 percent since the start of this fiscal year and every industry in Pakistan is suffering from these inflationary pressures."
"Pharma industry has been impacted the most as the prices were already artificially suppressed for over 17 years until Drug Pricing Policy came in place," he said, adding: "This resulted in severe shortages of life-saving drugs, episodes of epidemics and flight of research-based MNCs in Pakistan."
He applauded the government for considering hardship cases and giving a plausible price increase that was due since long. "Inflationary pressure and drastic increase in the cost of raw material have forced many manufacturers to stop producing unviable drugs and they filed for relief under hardship category to keep on providing medicines to the patients," he said, adding: "Unfortunately, the ultimate sufferer has always been the patient when such a situation occurs, however, the only way to keep counterfeit and fake medicines away from the market is to ensure continuous availability of quality medicines."
He said that the DRAP should also create awareness amongst the patients on counterfeit medicines, as according to some estimates, the proportion of such medicines is up to 50 percent in some Asian and African states as opposed to only seven percent in other international markets.