Pharmaceutical industry registers considerable growth: Centre - India News and Travel Times Provides India-centric and other News and Features

The Centre on Thursday informed the Lok Sabha that there has been considerable growth of the pharmaceutical industry in the country during the last few years. In a written statement, Union Minister of State for Chemicals and Fertilizers Srikant Kumar Jena said : "As per the information available with Pharmaceuticals Department through ORG-IMS, April, MAT value of Indian pharmaceutical market is Rs. 55,454 crores." Jena said the average approximate MAT value for 2007 was Rs. 43,904 crore, in 2008 was Rs. 50,410 crore. The minister also informed the members that the ministry monitors production of selected bulk drugs only. According to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Agency (NPPA) report the price increase in respect of 122 cases of Scheduled drugs and formulations ranged between 0 percent to 25 percent. Only in 3 cases, the price increase was between 25 percent to 50 percent mainly due to upward revision in the notified price of the bulk drug, the minister said. Jena also informed the lower house of the Parliament that based on monitoring of prices of non-scheduled formulations, NPPA has fixed prices in case of 27 formulation packs and companies have reduced price voluntarily in case of 64 formulation packs. "Thus in all, prices of 91 packs of non-scheduled drugs have got reduced as a result of the intervention of NPPA," he said.