|
The National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) has revised the draft working sheet for retail price fixation of Glenmark Pharmaceuticals' cardiovascular drug combination cilnidipine 20 mg and telmisartan 40 mg, in tune with a review order issued by the Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP) in October.
The drug price watchdog had on March 27, 2023, fixed the price of the drug combination at Rs. 12.83 per tablet, excluding Goods and Services Tax (GST), against which the company approached the review authority in April, 2023.
The revised draft working sheet of the Authority, released on its website on November 29, proposes the price at Rs. 14.15 per tablet, after considering the price of Ajanta Pharma's drug as directed by the DoP. Three companies have a market size of one percent of above for the drug in the country, and the total Moving Annual Turnover of the drug is Rs. 14.65 crore.
The company, in its review application with the DoP, said that the NPPA has erred in determining the retail price of the drug combination and hence, may be directed to revise the same on various grounds.
It argued that in the working sheet uploaded earlier in the website, prior to the notification of the price in March, 2023, the price to retailer data of Ajanta Pharma Ltd was incorrectly taken as Rs. 148.57 instead of Rs. 200 due to which the retail price of the drug formulation has been incorrectly calculated on the lower side.
The data has also been revised or corrected by Pharmatrac in their database, which is relied by the pricing authority for fixation of prices, and the revised PTR of Rs. 200 is also reflected in their March database.
NPPA argued that the data considered for fixation of retail price is data available for the month ending immediately before six month of the application date, which is February 10, 2023, and the PTR data for July, 2022 as appearing in Pharmatrac database of January, 2023 was considered for calculation of retail price.
The PTR of the brand Cinod T (Ajanta Pharma's brand) for July, 2022 was Rs. 9.90 per tablet in Pharmatrac database of January, 2023 and the same was considered for retail price fixation, it said. While the authority has uploaded the draft worksheet for the drug on March 10, 2023, for 10 working days to invite comments from affected firms, no representation was received from Glenmark Pharmaceuticals or Ajanta Pharma Ltd during this period, it argued.
However, based on additional submission of Glenmark Pharma, NPPA sought confirmation from Pharmatrac with respect to the PTR, MAT, pack size and strength of Cinod T 20/40 mg tablet of Ajanta Pharma and Pharmatrac has confirmed that the correct MRP is Rs. 280 and they have updated their database.
The DoP observed that the Pharmatrac has confirmed the correction of price since there was an error in the data and considering this, the NPPA may relook into the issue and revise the retail price on the basis of provisions under the Drugs Prices Control Order.
In the revised draft working sheet uploaded now, the Authority has revised the PTR of the combination from Ajanta Pharma to Rs. 200 and considered the price per unit of Rs. 13.33 for price revision. This is the maximum price per unit for the drug combination, for which the prices of Alembic Ltd and JB Chemicals were considered by the authority for price fixation. JB Chemicals' Cilacar T 20/40 mg tablet 10's has the minimum price per unit considered by the Authority during the process.
|