PESHAWAR, June 25: The Pakistan Chemists and Druggists Association (PCDA) has decided to launch a campaign to protest against the government’s plan to deregulate the prices of drugs, the association’s office-bearers told Dawn on Tuesday.

“We have decided to start protest movement against the government’s plan of deregulation of drug prices and imposition of 15 per cent GST on it,” said Arbab Javid Ahmed, chairman of the PCDA, Peshawar chapter.

He said a meeting of the association would be held in Islamabad before June 30 to evolve a strategy, in consultation with other stake-holders, for launching a nationwide movement to force the government to withdraw the general sales tax on the drugs.

Mr Ahmed said the multinational pharmaceutical companies hatched conspiracies every now and then to increase the prices of their products. He added that the MNCs, in collaboration with the “corrupt” officials of the federal health ministry, had successfully increased the prices of drugs in 1993 when the then government had bowed down before them and had announced deregulation of the prices of 673 drugs out of the total 831 being sold in the country.

Since 1993, the companies had increased the prices by 500 per cent and if the prices of all the drugs were deregulated, they would get a free hand to exploit the poor patients, he warned.

PCDA Senior Vice-Chairman Abdul Hadi Khan alleged that the MNCs had deprived the national exchequer of billion of rupees by over-invoicing though the prices of the raw materials used for making drugs had come down in the international market.

He asked the government not to decontrol the prices of the drugs and compel the MNCs to bring down the prices to give relief to the people.

He urged the government to convene a meeting of drug manufacturers and the representatives of chemists and doctors to debate the drug-pricing mechanism in the country.