Hopes for more drugs to see price revisions in India

Close on the heels of a price hike for anticoagulant drug heparin, India's pharma industry has been urging the government to initiate an upward price revision for another 25-30 drugs as raw material prices and other expenses eat into margins.

India, a global hub for generic drugs, has launched a new scheme to boost production of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) that are greatly dependent on the Chinese supply chain. However, API prices of common antibiotics like norfloxacin and ciprofloxacin, as well as paracetamol and some vitamins have shot up.

Earlier, several representations were made to the pricing regulator, the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA), after prices of the API of heparin leapt by over 200% over the last two years. The current pandemic added to drug manufacturers woes as supplies from China were majorly disrupted.

In mid-July, the NPPA allowed a one-time price increase of 50% till December 31, 2020, for heparin injectable.

Call for price cap review on other products

The pharmaceutical industry has again cobbled together several representations and asked the pricing regulator to consider reviewing the price cap on other products that have seen significant price increase in recent months.

"On an average for some products the API prices have shot up by 25%-30%. API roughly constitutes 35% of the production cost," said an official of the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA), the lobby group representing big pharmaceutical firms in India, though this could go up to 80% in certain cases depending on the prevailing API prices. "When the input cost is higher, then the final price of the product shoots up, leading to a financially unviable business proposition for the industry," said the official.