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The Pharmaceutical Advisory Forum, formed by the Government will be meeting shortly. This meeting will be in the backdrop of consensus arrived at an interactive session held recently with the representatives of major Pharmaceutical Industry Associations at the level of Shri Ram Vilas Paswan, Union Minister for Chemicals , Fertilizers and Steel. Major issues discussed at the meeting were: making available essential drugs at reasonable prices, high trade margin prevailing on some of the drugs, problems of spurious drugs, R&D, and supply of medicines to hospitals. . The Minister had expressed concern of the Government over the high prices and high trade margin prevailing in the case of some of the drugs. After detailed discussion, there was a near consensus on some of the issues like keeping reasonable trade margin on drugs and MRP inclusive of taxes (after introduction of VAT in April 2005).
The Government has constituted the Pharmaceutical Advisory Forum to help realise the objectives of the Drug Policies issued from time to time. The Forum has a wide membership including representatives from Drug Industry Associations, Chemist Associations, NGOs and Consumer Organizations.
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