PESHAWAR, May 29: The Pakistan Chemists and Druggists Association (PCDA), Peshawar chapter, has expressed concern over the government’s plan to deregularize the prices of drugs, saying that it will pave the way for multinational pharmaceutical companies to increase the prices of their products at will.

Talking to Dawn here on Wednesday, PCDA Senior Vice-Chairman Abdul Hadi Khan said efforts were afoot to deregulate the prices of all the drugs and to hand over the drug-price mechanism to the ministry of industries from the ministry of health.

By deregularizing the prices of drugs, the MNCs would fleece the people, he warned, saying that “at present, 673 drugs are being listed as decontrolled out of the total 831 drugs in Pakistan. The prices of these drugs are already high and the new plan, if implemented, would hit the patients hard.”

He said the 831 drugs had been registered by the generic names and every drug was being manufactured by more than 50 pharmaceuticals, increasing the total number of the registered drugs to more than 37,000 in the country.

The PCDA official was of the view that the government was dancing to the tune of the MNCs, which gave bribes to health ministry officials and increased the prices of the drugs.

According to the rules, he said, the MNCs were required to increase the prices of controlled and deregulated drugs by minimum three per cent and four per cent, respectively, which was subject to approval of the health ministry, the federal cabinet or the economic coordination council (ECC). With the proposed pricing mechanism, the multinational pharmaceutical companies would get a free hand and would increase the prices every now and then, he remarked.