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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | New drug policy forces many pharmacies to shut shop -Raji Reddy Kesireddy

New drug policy forces many pharmacies to shut shop -Raji Reddy Kesireddy

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published Published on Sep 30, 2013   modified Modified on Sep 30, 2013
-The Economic Times


HYDERABAD: Numerous pharmacies - especially those operating on rented space - are shutting down across the country, hurt by a sharp decline in margins after the introduction of a new pricing policy for medicines and intense competition from bigger players.

The new Drug Price Control Order (DPCO), which was notified on May 15, has made the prices of some 150 drugs fall steeply. Under this, companies and retailers are forced to keep drugs at particular prices, which are arrived at using a formula.

Industry bodies said the DPCO reduced prices by an average 20-25%; in some cases, it was as high as 80%.

This has led to a sharp contraction in margins earned by pharmacies, which now stands at about 16% for most drugs. Pharmacy owners complain this is too little, especially considering the high cost of rent in cities like Mumbai.

"Survival of the retail medical stores has become a question mark," said JS Shinde, president of the All India Organisation of Chemists and Druggists (AIOCD), which has about 7.5 lakh chemists as members. He said 100-120 medical stores have shut shop in Mumbai after the implementation of the new pricing mechanism.

Arvind Bothra, an analyst with Mumbai-based brokerage Religare, said: "Lower margins could drive out some chemists, especially those operating on rental premises."

To beat the squeeze on margins, the bigger pharmacy chains - such as Apollo Pharmacy, Hetero and Med-Plus - have changed tack and are now focusing on their own labels and getting discounts on drugs using economies of scale. For instance, Apollo now sells its own brand of shaving lotion and condoms.

"Thanks to steep reduction in prices of 150 drugs, the margins are quite alarming given the high cost of operations," said B Venkat Raju, joint secretary and convener of AIOCD in the south.

While AIOCD declined to give details on the number of shops shut down in the region, experts said it could run into a few hundreds. "It becomes difficult to run operations if retailers don't get at least Rs 5,000 a day in Mumbai and at least Rs 3,000 a day in cities like Hyderabad," said AIOCD national president Shinde.

Shobana Kamineni, executive director of Apollo Hospitals and head of its pharmacy business, said the group had stopped giving discounts on the drugs that had come under pricing control. She said the group is going to add another 300 outlets this year to its existing network of 1,550. Madhukar Gangadi, chief executive of MedPlus, a pharmacy retail chain with some 1,070 outlets, said the drugs whose prices were slashed formed some 20% of pharmacies' product portfolio.

A senior executive of Apollo Pharmacy, who did not wish to be identified, said the group was increasing its private label portfolio from less than hundred to some 150 by the end of the year.


The Economic Times, 30 September, 2013, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/healthcare/biotech/pharmaceuticals/new-drug-policy-forces-many-pharmacies-to-shut-shop/articleshow/232


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