NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's decision to withdraw the drug pricing authority's powers to fix the prices of non-essential medicines will be on a prospective basis, and will not affect price caps imposed in July on 108 drugs, a senior government official said on Tuesday.
The official in the drug pricing authority declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.
The Department of Pharmaceuticals withdrew guidelines issued on May 29 that gave the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) the powers to fix the prices of drugs that are not on the essential medicines list, the latter said in a notice late on Monday.
"It's a prospective withdrawal, not a retrospective withdrawal" the official told Reuters.
(Reporting by Aditya Kalra in New Delhi; Editing by Ryan Woo)
