The Hindu : Karnataka News : Drugs warehousing society keen to open retail outlets

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Oct 21, 2004

Karnataka

Karnataka

Drugs warehousing society keen to open retail outlets

By Our Special Correspondent

BANGALORE, OCT. 20. If the Drugs Control Department agrees, the Karnataka Drugs Logistic and Warehousing Society may soon have a retail outlet here, the forerunner to outlets at 13 other warehouses across the State.

Mohamnmed Sanaulla, Commissioner, Health and Family Welfare Department, and Chairman of the warehousing society, announced this on Wednesday after inaugurating a workshop on drug prices and regulations for drugs control enforcement officers.

Low prices

The department was already making available life-saving drugs at low prices at government hospitals and primary healthcare centres, Mr. Sanaulla said.

The warehouses had been started with Rs. 15-crore funding from the European Commission to test the quality of drugs before they reached the healthcare centres.

He said drugs worth Rs. 100 crores might be purchased for the public healthcare system this year. The sale of drugs in the State totalled Rs. 3,500 crores a year and the regulatory machinery was not adequate, he said.

National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority, the central regulatory body, often modified its guidelines and a more interactive machinery with the States may be necessary, he said. While no reputed pharmaceutical company would deliberately cheat, there was, sometimes, overpricing of specific medicines owing to ignorance of the law. "If the consumer is confused about the retail prices of drugs, so is the department sometimes," he said.

Excise duty

The Additional Commissioner of Customs and Central Excise, D.P. Nagendrakumar, said excise duty was imposed from the manufacturing stage of drugs up to its sale to wholesalers.

The Central Excise Department would be glad to share information with the Drugs Control Department so that facts about a drug having been taxed or not could be verified, he said. Post-manufacturing expenses such as packaging, advertising and marketing were being taken into account at the wholesale price stage. The excise tariffs were subject to interpretation, he said.

H. Srinivas, president of the Drugs Control Department Enforcement Officers' Association, Bangalore, said scheduled life-savings drugs should have a ceiling price and excise duty pricing.

Consumers often wondered about retail price variations and one reason was that generic drugs often cost less than branded medicine.

The department did not always know which drug manufacturers had paid excise and also details such as retailers' commissions and any free offers.

The tax exemption given to small industries too had to be calculated when it came to retail prices, he added.

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