ISLAMABAD, Jan 14: Pakistan Pharmaceutical Manufacturer’s Association (PPMA) has asked the government to follow a uniform drug pricing by adopting leader price policy.

In a letter to secretary health Ejaz Rahim, the PPMA chairman has emphasized that the adoption of brand leader price policy would not only help adjust the prices of all similar drug products according to the ceiling of the brand leader, but also greatly reduce the workload on the health ministry in processing a large number of pricing cases.

The letter said the pricing policies being followed by the health ministry did not conform to the brand leader pricing policy and similar products were given different prices, though they contained the same essential ingredients and were in no way different from one another.

The criteria by which these companies are given different prices were not known to the applicant companies, it said.

Under the brand leader policy, the company which introduces a new product was allowed a monopoly on prices for a period of 10 years.

The letter said the brand leader policy would also allow the manufacturers to know in advance the price level at which they would be in a position to market their products. It will also enable them to plan their production and devise their marketing strategies properly.

The chairman recalled that Pakistan was the first country in the region to introduce the concept of leader price, which was subsequently adopted in many other countries, including India, under the name of ceiling prices, and in European countries and Japan, under the name of reference prices.