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Government plans a crackdown on pharma firms selling drugs as dietary supplements
The government is planning a crackdown on drug companies selling medicines under the garb of dietary supplements, which are not regulated. Senior officials in the department of pharmaceuticals and the health ministry said several drug makers have secured approval for drugs as dietary supplements under the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act, where price and other regulations on drugs do not apply. This not only allows them to sell the product at a price more than the maximum retail price fixed by the government for the ingredient drug but also...
read morePMEAC comes up with 3 pricing models to fix retail prices of 328 drugs
The Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council has suggested a complex combination of three pricing models to fix retail prices of 348 essential drugs to balance industry’s concerns and public health. The proposal, however, has drawn the ire of drug makers who say it is a watered down version of the health ministry’s proposals. The council has proposed that for medicines facing “insufficient competition” or a monopoly-like situation, the retail price should be fixed on the basis of cost of production with a top up...
read moreJ&J Targets Buys in OTC Segment
Johnson & Johnson (J&J) India will reduce its dependence on its neargeneric Johnson’s baby care range of products that makes up for half its revenues, and focus more on feminine hygiene, skin-care and over-the-counter (OTC) items. “India is one of our top three markets in the Asia-Pacific region, the other two being China and Australia,” the reclusive company’s group chairman for its Asia-Pacific division, Grace Castano, told media in an interaction. J&J is very keen to do whatever it takes to regain lost ground...
read moreRoad To Cheaper Drugs
Natco Pharma’s Strategy Of Invoking Compulsory Licensing Clause Could Be A Game-Changer For The Generics Industry The government’s decision to bust the price as well as monopoly of Bayer’s anti-cancer drug, through the process of compulsory licensing now opens up the field for the generic industry to follow suit and could well pave the way for the availability of cheaper drugs for lifestyle diseases. More generic companies could invoke the compulsory licensing clause of the Indian Patents Act, following Monday’s decision to allow Natco...
read moreOnly 41% houses ‘livable’
The Indian household is, not surprisingly, shrinking. Data from Census 2011 shows that the proportion of households with one or two married couples has risen over the last few years, while the proportion of households in which three or more married couples lived together has declined. India now has 24.7 crore households and 24.5 crore residential or partly residential houses, leaving a gap of 0.2 crore between the available housing stock and the number of households. This gap, says the Registrar General’s office, is reducing. However,...
read more20% travel half km to drink water
Drinking water is supposed to be one of India’s success stories — the government says it met its Millennium Development Goal on water five years ahead of time, and that its rural drinking water mission has reached every uncovered habitation. Yet Census 2011 data shows that 20% of Indian households have to travel more than half a kilometer for drinking water, and that this figure has actually grown in rural India. Taps (43%) and handpumps (34%) are the two main sources of drinking water, followed by wells and borewells. While taps are the...
read more1 lakh households have no electricity, 85% of rural India uses firewood as fuel
43% of rural households still use kerosene to light their houses. Even in urban India, the proportion of those using LPG is under two-thirds. But 20% of urban Indians too still use firewood for cooking Barely one in every ten households in rural Bihar and two-thirds of houses in the state’s urban areas use electricity to light their houses, Census 2011 figures reveal. Just over half of rural India uses electricity as its main source of lighting, an increase of 12% over 2001. If that seems heartening, the data also shows that 43% of rural...
read more200 million Indians don’t own a TV, phone or vehicle
One-sixth of the country, or 200 million Indians, don’t possess any of the most basic assets like a transistor or TV, phone, a vehicle of any kind or a computer. In three states—Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and MP—close to a third of the households own none of these assets. On Tuesday, the registrar general of India released the final figures for the first phase of Census 2011, known as the Houselisting and Housing Census. The data shows how India lives—how many people to a house, how they light their houses and where they get their...
read moreHealth ministry opposes new mechanism for pricing of drugs
Fearing an across-the-board increase in the prices of essential drugs, the health ministry is seeking to prevail on the department of pharmaceuti- cals (DoP) to rethink its policy to move to market-based pricing of drugs. The current drug pricing regime is based on cost-plus pricing, where prices are determined on the basis of raw materials, competition and profit margin. However, in Oc- tober, the DoP introduced the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Policy 2011 (NPPP), which recommended market-based pricing. However, the health ministry has...
read moreFidelity PE Arm Buys Over 20% in Pharma Co Aptuit for Rs. 200 cr
Fidelity Growth Partners, the India-focused private equity arm of Fidelity Worldwide, has invested close to Rs. 200 crore in Hyderabad-based pharmaceutical company Aptuit Laurus for over 20% stake, an indication of the continuing lure of the Indian pharma market for foreign investors. Aptuit, which has a turnover of Rs. 500 crore, manufactures active pharmaceutical ingredients, the key component of medicines. It is also a contract manufacturer. “We’re positive on pharma sector in a big way… US pharmaceutical giants are tightening...
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