Gap In Price of Branded And Janaushadhi Medicines Around 50%
New Delhi, Feb 12 (TNA) Under the Pradhan Mantri Bhartiya Janaushadhi Pariyojana (PMBJP) being implemented by the Department of Pharmaceuticals, a medicine is priced on the principle of maximum of 50% of average price of the top three brands of the said medicine.
Thus, the prices of Jan Aushadhi Medicines are cheaper at least by 50% and in some cases, by 80% to 90% of the market price of the branded medicines.
Pharmaceuticals & Medical Devices Bureau of India (PMBI), the implementing agency of the Scheme has presently its warehouses situated at Gurugram, Chennai and Guwahati. In addition, there are 39 number of distributors spread all across the country. A total of six warehouses are envisaged by March 2025.
The information was given by the Union Minister of Chemicals and Fertilizers, Mansukh Mandaviya in a written reply in the Lok Sabha on Friday.
As on January 31, about 8,675 PMBJP Kendras have been opened in all the districts of the country so as to ensure accessibility of quality affordable generic medicines.
In order to ensure availability of medicines, an Information Technology (IT) enabled End-to-End supply chain system with Point-of-Sale (POS) application for value added services has been implemented by PMBI to monitor end to end supply chain management system.
All warehouses have SAP based inventory management system and the demand forecasting is done through the said system so as to place orders as per the desired inventory levels. National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) under the Department of Pharmaceuticals regulates the prices of all drugs – whether branded or generic.
While it fixes the ceiling price of scheduled medicines specified in the first schedule of the Drugs (Prices Control) Order, 2013, in case of non-scheduled medicines, the manufactures are free to fix Maximum Retail Price (MRP) of the drug.
However, DPCO provides that the same do not increase by more than 10% of their MRP during the preceding twelve months. The details of retail/ceiling prices fixed/revised by NPPA are available on NPPA’s website, viz., www.nppaindia.nic.in.