Prices of around 12,000 drug SKUs decline in Jan: NPPA

Prices of around 12,000 stock keeping units (SKUs) of medicines have come down during January this year as a consequence of implementation of price control mechanism, according to national drug price regulator NPPA.
As per the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA), prices of 1,791 SKUs of scheduled drugs has come down during January this year following compliance of DPCO 2013.
Prices of 10,158 nonscheduled drugs have also declined during the period.
"As per a internal exercise conducted by NPPA to observe the price movement of medicines during the month of January, 2015 it was found that there was compliance of DPCO 2013 from pricing perspective in respect of 99.4 per cent of SKU's," NPPA said.

There is compliance of DPCO 2013 from standpoint of prices in respect of overwhelming majority of medicines, it added.
As per the findings of the exercise, NPPA found that there was decline of prices in respect to 11,949 SKU's out of which 1,791 were under the scheduled category while 10,158 were nonscheduled SKUs.
Further, in order to reign in certain instances of price violation by the manufacturers, NPPA said it will take necessary action in cases where price violation has been established under the provisions of DPCO 2013.
As per the NPPA, prices of 621 drugs were found to be hiked beyond permissible limits by some of the manufacturers.