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NPPA releases draft ceiling price calculation for 20 formulations
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Gireesh Babu, New Delhi
April 13 , 2023
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The National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) has released the draft version of ceiling price calculation for 20 formulations including certain strengths of paracetamol, povidone iodine, risperidone injection and Japanese encephalitis vaccines under the revised Schedule I of the Drugs (Prices Control) Order, 2013.
This is the 15th lot of draft calculation sheets released by the pricing authority after it has revised the schedule I of the DPCO, 2013 with the National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM), 2022, in the second half of last year.
The latest lot of draft calculation sheet include proposals to fix the price of newly added formulations of risperidone injection (long acting) 25 mg at Rs. 1,930.19 per ml, and risperidone injection (long acting) 37.5 mg at Rs. 2649.26 per ml.
For the formulations gentamicin injection 40 mg/ml, dexamethasone injection 4 mg/ml, and paracetamol injection 150 mg/ml, for which prices were not fixed earlier, the calculation sheet proposes Rs. 2.90 per unit, Rs. 2.57 per unit and Rs. 1.60 per unit, respectively.
Ceiling price of fluconazole capsule 100 mg has been proposed with a 31.96% cut at Rs. 21.40 per unit, efavirenz capsule 200 mg by 26.67 per cent at Rs. 21.98 per unit, and fluoxetine tablet 20 mg by 15.85% at Rs. 4.15 per unit.
The Authority, in the beginning of the current financial year, has said that the price reduction following the inclusion of NLEM 2022 into the DPCO, 2013 has resulted in a price cut of around 6.73 per cent on around 651 formulations, even after the prices were allowed to increase by around 12.12 per cent in tune with the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) increase effective April 1, 2023.
The Authority clarified that as per the WPI increase, the prices of scheduled formulations were allowed to be increased by 12.12 per cent from April 1, 2023. However, based on the revised Schedule I of the DPCO, 2023, prices of 870 formulations are being revised or fixed based on NLEM, 2022. So far prices of 651 scheduled formulations have been reduced by around 16.62 per cent. Even after considering the 12.12 per cent price increase based on the WPI, the price of these 651 essential medicines are still down by 6.73 per cent for the consumer, said the Authority.
For instance, the ceiling price of paracetamol tablet 500 mg was at Rs. 1.01 per unit under the NLEM, 2015 as on April 1, 2022, and after revising the ceiling price according to NLEM 2022 and even after adding the WPI, as on April 1, 2023 the ceiling price stood at Rs. 0.89 per tablet, which is a 11.88 per cent net reduction from NLEM 2015 after WPI increase.
Similarly, diabetes drug metformin 500 mg tablet, costed Rs. 2.13 per tablet as on April 1, 2022, has come down to Rs. 2.01 per tablet as on April 1, 2023, which is a net reduction of 5.63 per cent; ceiling price of glimepiride tablet 2 mg as on April 1, 2022 was at Rs. 6.34 per tablet and it has come down to Rs. 5.79 per tablet a year later, with a 8.68 per cent net reduction from NLEM, 2015 after WPI increase of 12.12 per cent.
The clarification was in the backdrop of news reports, which stated that the prices of medicines had become costly by 12.12 per cent from April 1, 2023, following the addition of the WPI increase.
The Authority opined that as per reports, due to the market forces and the presence of Jan Aushadhi stores in the country, the drug manufacturers also generally tend to keep their maximum retail prices less than the ceiling price in many cases.
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