The Centre may soon come up with price cut on a range of critical medicines, according to a News18 report. Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya is expected to meet top manufacturers and pharma lobbies to zero in on the list of drugs set to undergo trade margin rationalisation, it added. 

“The minister is slated to meet the industry on July 26 on the subject of trade margin rationalisation on non-scheduled drugs,” a Health ministry official was quoted by News18 as saying. 

The revision of trade margins will bring down the prices of critical drugs. Trade margins are the difference between the price to trade for manufacturers and the price to patients as the maximum retail price. 

According to the report, the Union Health Ministry is mulling to reduce the price of drugs used for the treatment of diabetes, and cardiovascular and chronic kidney diseases. 

The official was further quoted as saying that discussions were also underway on whether the announcement of price cut could be made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the Independence Day. 

National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA), the drug price watchdog, has been working on the TMR plan for the past several months. In 2019, the agency had put a cap on trade margins of 42 selected non-scheduled anti-cancer medicines. 

Mandaviya had informed the Lok Sabha that the move helped reduce the MRP of 526 brands of these medicines by up to 90 per cent.