National
Pharmaceutical policy
By Our Special Correspondent
NEW DELHI, FEB. 5. The Union Cabinet today approved a new pharmaceutical policy which envisages a comprehensive liberalisation of the drug price control regime besides a series of measures to promote research and development in the pharma industry.
Official sources said that a set of new criteria would now decide on which drugs should be under the price control regime and which not. The foremost criterion would be whether the drug was in the essentiality list maintained by the Union Health Ministry.
The second filter would be the turnover of the drug. Drugs with a sale of Rs. 25 crores and above, with a market share of 50 per cent in a category with several competitors, would trigger the price-control regime. Likewise, drugs with a sale between Rs. 10 crores and Rs. 25 crores and a market share of over 90 per cent, in the category of monopoly drug, would trigger the regime.
The incentives to promote R&D would include a measure under which indigenously-developed drugs, which are patented, would be out of the price-control regime for the life of the patent. In addition, a Rs. 150-crore fund would be available for promotion of pharma research. It would be administered by the Department of Science and Technology.
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