Published On : Wed, Mar 29th, 2023

Medicine prices to go up by 12% from April 1

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New Delhi: Prices of essential medicines are expected to rise by 12 percent in what would be the highest-ever annual price hike. The prices of more than 1,000 formulations of essential medicines and 384 drugs are expected to be raised by the government from April 1.

The prices of 384 drugs and over 1,000 formulations classified as essential medicines by the government are set to see the highest-ever annual rise of over 12 percent, due to a sharp rise in the Wholesale Price Index (WPI).

Annual hikes in the prices of drugs listed in the National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM) are based on the WPI. Also called essential drugs, these medicines are used in various government health programmes, apart from being sold directly to retail consumers.

Officials in the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority said that the WPI stood at 12.12 percent between January last year and this year, citing the office of the Economic Adviser in the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. However, this figure is yet to be notified officially.

The hike in medicine prices will be effective beginning April 1 and is likely to be notified anytime now. This will be the second year in a row that the costs of essential medicines go up by more than 10 percent. Last year, the annual hike in the prices of these drugs was about 11 percent.

Last September, the Union Government released NLEM 2022, comprising 384 drugs and over 1,000 formulations across 27 therapeutic categories. The list, which replaced the previous one released seven years earlier, included some of the most commonly used medicines in the country.

NLEM drugs are used to treat common conditions such as fever, diabetes, infection, cardiovascular diseases, blood disorders, tuberculosis, hypertension, skin diseases. cancer and anaemia, among others. It includes paracetamol and antibiotics such as azithromycin, as well as anti-anaemia prescriptions such as folic acid, vitamins and minerals.

Of the nearly 6,000 formulations available in the Indian market, nearly 18 percent are scheduled drugs, which means that they are under price controls or for which the maximum retail price is fixed by the NPPA.

For the last few years, several medical devices such as coronary stents and knee implants, too, have been brought under the ambit of price controls. Before 2022, the prices of these medicines used to rise by only 2-3 percent and seldom exceeded 4 percent, industry insiders said.

Prices of non-scheduled drugs, on the other hand, are set to go up by up to 10 percent as per government rules, despite an industry demand to ease this norm in the wake of rising production costs and active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) prices.