ISLAMABAD, Aug 22: The Foundation for the Preferment of Pharmaceutical Sciences has welcomed the government decision of withdrawing general sales tax from the medicines.

It, however, opposed the deregulation of the drug prices and stressed the need for a law to check transfer pricing by MNCs.

Talking to Dawn here on Thursday the Foundation president, Choudhry Sajjad Munir, said the decision will not only ease the woes of the poor patients in getting cheaper medication but will also benefit the industry.

He, however, appealed to the President not to deregulate the medicine prices in the best interest of the nation. “We have already undergone the experiment of 1993’s deregulation as a result of which the prices of medicine increased by 1000 per cent”, he said.

He maintained that the same experiment should not be repeated again, suggesting that a strong regulation should be put in place, like other countries of the world, to control the prices and quality of drugs.

He also strongly advocated for a regulation to check what he called the unjustified transfer pricing of medicines by multinational companies (MNCs), which, according to him will result in decrease in drug prices and halt the huge loss of foreign exchange to the national exchequer.

He said that due to transfer pricing the MNCs cause over Rs5 billion loss in foreign exchange to the country annually.

Mr Munir said, “there is huge difference and variation in the prices of molecules even though the patents are expired / not valid in Pakistan.”