Continue linking medicine prices to CPI, PPMA urges

The Pakistan Pharmaceutical Manufacturers' Association (PPMA) has urged relevant authorities to continue linking medicine prices with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for uninterrupted production by the pharmaceutical industry.

Addressing a press conference, PPMA chairperson Tauqeerul Haq said on Wednesday that medicine prices should be periodically reviewed given the inflation, as up to 95 per cent raw material used in drug manufacturing was imported.

"In the past, several essential drugs had gone missing from the market as producing them had become difficult for manufacturers in absence of regular reviewing of prices," he recalled.

Haq reiterated that people were forced to use substandard imported medicines when the local industry was unable to manufacture drugs for economic reasons.

Pointing towards the hike in the prices of medicines, he said that the prices of 94 essential drugs had been recently increased by the government as an increment in those rates was due for more than a decade. He added that the federal government had taken the decision to increase the prices two years ago but it was implemented recently to ensure medicines' availability in the market.

He claimed that the impression regarding drugs being expensive in Pakistan was wrong as a medicine pack's average price was Rs160, which was far low the price of medicines in other countries in the region.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 15^th, 2020.