Cholesterol medicine Atorvastatin’s price is almost halved, says a chemist linked to a Mumbai hospital, but the new stocks have yet to come in, he points out.

And that is ground reality. Consumers are yet to get the benefits of reduced medicine prices, as promised by the Government. And the delay is being caused by a messy mix of Government directives, nightmarish logistics involved in recalling and re-labelling medicine stocks and a reluctant trade, unhappy with its own margins being reduced by the recently revised drug policy.

But this confusion, and threat of medicine shortages, could well have been averted, say pharma industry-watchers.

From the company to the chemist, the inventory pipeline is usually stocked for about 60 to 75 days, says Muralidharan Nair, Partner with consultant company Ernst & Young.

The Government’s 45-day timeline given to companies to change to the new medicine prices was rather “aggressive”, he says.

Companies should have been given about 90 to 120 days to phase out existing stocks, and that would have been time enough for medicines with the revised prices to come into the market, he added.

As part of the recently revised drug policy, 348 drugs in the National List of Essential Medicines (covering about 650 formulations) were brought under price control.

And the Government issued separate lists revising the prices of these medicines.

Companies were given 45 days from the day the new price list was issued, to change the price on its medicines. And the deadline on the first list of 151 medicines lapsed this Monday.

Companies complained that they could not recall existing stocks, but could change the price on all medicines produced after the Government directive was issued.

Nair says that such a solution was not workable, as it would lead to the same product having different prices, despite being from the same company.

Multiple directives

The implementation of the price revision is turning out to be a logistic nightmare, say company representatives, as they balance their act between directives from the Ministries of Health and Finance, respectively.

While Health ministry has given them a one-time breather to change their price tags and sport the new ones, the Finance ministry’s directive has left companies none the wiser, says an industry veteran.

Companies have been allowed to change their price labels, at locations outside their manufacturing bases, but the time allowed to make this change is not clear, he added.

With 12,000 manufacturers, seven lakh retailers and 15,000 stockists – it is near impossible to recall stocks already supplied into the channels, says an industry representative.

As a result, individual companies and industry associations have gone to Court, seeking clarity on the implementation of the Drug Price Control Order (2013) by the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority.