New Delhi: Many important medicines used in the treatment of sugar, heart, and kidney may soon become affordable in the country. The central government has made preparations to fix trade margins to cut the prices of these drugs. Trade Margin is actually the difference between the wholesale price issued by the manufacturer and the maximum retail price paid to the consumer. The drug price watchdog National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) has been working on this plan for the past several months. An official of the Ministry of Health has given this information to News18.com.
Trade margin will be rationalized in a phased manner and the pharmaceutical industry will be given time to implement the entire process so that the pharmaceutical industry can make necessary changes. The source said that the government has already reduced the margins of anti-cancer category drugs. Similarly, this time the margin of medicines related to anti-diabetic and kidney diseases will be reduced. It is worth noting that in 2018-19, NPPA had reduced the trade margin on 42 non-scheduled anti-cancer drugs. Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya had told in the Lok Sabha that due to this move of the government, the MRP of 526 brands of these medicines has come down by 90 percent.
Trade margin increases with price
A study conducted by APPA revealed that the trade margin increases with the price of a single bullet. If the price of a tablet of most brands is Rs 2, then the margin on this is 50 percent. On the other hand, if its price is 15 to 25 rupees, then the margin remains less than 40 percent. At least 2.97 percent of the trade margin in medicine in the tablet category of 50 to 100 rupees is 50 to 100 percent, 1.25 percent in the medicine trade margin between 100 to 200 percent, and 2.41 such drugs have a trade margin of 200 percent to 500 percent. Is.
According to the NPP, if the price of a tablet is above Rs 100, then it is kept in the expensive category. Out of such tablets, 8% margin on tablets is 200 to 500 percent, 2.7 percent of drugs have 500 to 1,000 percent and 1.48 percent of tablets have a trade margin above 1,000 percent.
