See more drug price caps; max impact on Sanofi: Expert

NPPA has cut and capped prices of some major anti-diabetes and cardiovascular drugs that were not part of the 652 drugs earlier listed out by the government as essential drugs last year.

This is not coming completely out of the blue, inter brand price differences have been discussed but the industry is offended because it has not been done in a consultative process.

Vikas Dandekar

India Bureau Chief

PharmAsia News.Com

While the pharma industry has not welcomed the government's move to put a cap on the pricing cardiovascular and diabetes drugs , it was in the offing, says Vikas Dandekar, India Bureau Chief, Pharmasia News.

Also read: NPPA adding more drugs a retrograde step: Lupin

Speaking to CNBC-TV18, Dandekar says a lot of discrepancy exists in the pricing of drugs in India, but individual companies are likely to be impacted more than the entire industry.

"Bigger brands were charging more for the same drug molecules. Infact now the government is likely to bring more formulations under the drug pricing purview. All medicines to cure diseases like HIV, Tuberculosis (TB), malaria and oncology-related drugs will be capped in time to come," he says.

Dandekar further adds that Sanofi is likely to see the maximum impact of this price capping in India.

Below is the verbatim transcript of Vikas Dandekar's interview with Latha Venkatesh & Sonia Shenoy on CNBC-TV18.

Sonia: Your analysis of the entire thing and do you think that this is not the end; more drugs could be brought under this ambit?

A: What the government has done, it has wider interest of public and the Drugs Price Control Order (DPCO) paragraph 19, which has been mentioned here in public interest where prices of drugs have become exploitative, they had to step-in. There are lots of debates going around in the industry whether the government should have done it in the way they have done it now; there should have been a consultative process to handle this issue. The point is that if you look at price variations between brands – that the is the key factor out here that there are lots of big brands, they have been developed in a way in which both multinationals and Indian companies have done a lot of work on it, promotional expenses are there and so they have created their own brands. When the government is comparing it – these are the same products but there are lots of variations, some times you will see that Rs 3 drug is costing Rs 19, if it is a big brand. So, there these disparities have crept in, which the government is trying to correct through this.

Latha: Ideologically you think that there was a case in the way in which drugs were priced?

A: Yes.

Latha: But is the manner in which it is announced giving you a feeling that this is not a one-off that such arguments will be applied to more drugs and especially crucial ones?

A: Yes, in fact this is just cardiovascular and diabetes which has been the most crowded sectors in our industry of USD 12.5 billion and there are hundreds of products in these two segments. The government has made it clear in its notification that they will be looking at HIV, they will be looking at Tuberculosis (TB), malaria and oncology –these are again where they will look at how they can do some kind of a price capping. This is not coming completely out of the blue, inter brand price differences have been discussed but the industry is offended because it has not been done in a consultative process and it actually widens the DPCO net to the entire industry if you extrapolate the same argument that brands are costing a lot more than some of the other counterpart brands.

Sanofi India stock price

On July 16, 2014, at 11:02 hrs Sanofi India was quoting at Rs 2961.00, up Rs 5.45, or 0.18 percent. The 52-week high of the share was Rs 3540.00 and the 52-week low was Rs 2280.00.

The company's trailing 12-month (TTM) EPS was at Rs 118.32 per share as per the quarter ended March 2014. The stock's price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio was 25.03. The latest book value of the company is Rs 584.74 per share. At current value, the price-to-book value of the company is 5.06.

Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang

See more drug price caps; max impact on Sanofi: Expert

Dengan url

https://olahragakecantikan.blogspot.com/2014/07/see-more-drug-price-caps-max-impact-on.html

Olahraga Kecantikan