Click to play videoNew Delhi: The Government is turning back on its promise of cheaper drugs for the common man. The Union minister for Chemical and Fertilisers said that the companies will regulate profit on their own.
This is what Union Chemical and Fertilisers Minister Ram Vilas Paswan said nearly nine months ago: "The wholesalers' margin should not be more than 15 per cent and the retailers' margin not be more than 35 per cent. They cannot have just their say."
Angered by self-determined profit margins of medicine wholesalers, Paswan promised to regulate the profit to keep prices steady. But now the minister has gone back on his word.
He now says, "If the wholesalers and retailers do not control the profit margin, then we know what to do. If we had imposed regulations on them they would have gone to the courts."
On Tuesday, Paswan released a list of 886 medicines whose prices will be cut down by two to 74 per cent by the companies themselves.
However, regulating the cost of just 886 medicines out of the 60,000 existing brands is hardly good news for the consumer.
(With inputs from Deepak Bajpayee)
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