Pharmaceutical companies asked to pass excise benefits to consumers

The National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) has asked manufacturers and pharmaceutical marketing companies to pas on the benefit of the reduction in the rate of excise duty on medicines from 8 per cent to 4 per cent.

THe NPPA has said the reduced rate of abatement should be passed on to the consumers through reduced maximum retail price (MRP).

Prices of all non-scheduled packs must accordingly be reduced downwards by 2.84 per cent, except in those categories of non-scheduled formulation packs where no excise duty has been actually paid to the government and, therefore, no excise duty is included in the MRP of such non-scheduled packs.

The NPPA said in a notification that it  expects the revised MRP  should be filed with the NPPA.

The drug pricing regulator said in a statement "NPPA shall accordingly monitor the limit of 10 per cent increase in prices per annum of non-scheduled packs based on the reduced MRP for all such packs where the batch of the formulation pack has been cleared by the manufacturer through the competent excise authorities on or after 7th December, 2008 in terms of abovementioned notification of the ministry of finance (department of revenue) dated 07.12.2008."