Patients can continue to buy essential drugs in the MRP before the GST, ie not at the highest prices, until the new lots reach pharmacies and stockists, and reach the shelves.
This will continue until the market inventory, which could be around two months, has been exhausted. New stocks with revised MRPs are expected to hit the market since August, industry experts said.
Essential medicines (those on the National Essential Drugs List, or NLEM) are subject to the 12% tax under the GST, and insulin and critical care products at 5%. Insulin and critical care products for kidney disease and cancer, as well as antiretrovirals, whose prices have been revised downwards, may be among the first to be deployed.
NPPA has also finalized the post-GST ceiling prices of NLEM drugs, based on information received from companies and prices were uploaded to its website by the end of June 30. Prices of about 78% of all drugs used and marketed in the country are remaining unchanged after GST, the NPPA said.
Ameesh Masurekar, director of AIOCD Awacs, a pharmaceutical research firm, told TOI, "Overall, there is a two-month market inventory, so shares with the new price are only expected for partially August and September completely. Replenishing drugs wherever the stock is low or more. Supplies are expected after a couple of weeks, with the price review, "said a Mumbai distributor.
Aside from a 17-day inventory inventory, there are two weeks of retail inventory - so there is no possibility of shortages of medicines, and all brands of medicine are available in adequate quantities, added Masurekar.
"Although hospital services are exempt, outsourced services, aesthetics and outpatient pharmacies are subject to the imposition of TPS. In the pharmaceutical scenario, the 5% rate of life-saving drugs that treat Diseases such as malaria, HIV-AIDS, tuberculosis and diabetes, marginally increase drug prices, leading to a domino effect on the health sector's cost structures, "said Ameera Shah, MD and promoter Of the diagnostic chain, said Metropolis
