Around 12 per cent of the drugs sold in the open market across the country are "substandard" and over 0.5 per cent are "spurious," a senior official of the Union health ministry said in Lucknow.

"At least 40,000 drugs are tested every year, and out of them 0.5 per cent are found spurious and 10-12 per cent turns out to be below standard, S P Agarwal, director general, health service, said while addressing a function at the Industrial Toxicology Research Centre in Lucknow on Thursday.

Noting that generally spurious drugs were in the form of capsules and tablets, he said such drugs were largely in sale in Haryana, Delhi, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.

Besides drugs, over 10 per cent of the food samples examined under the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act were found to be adulterated, he said.

In an effort to control this large-scale adulteration, the government was in the process of launching a Rs 325 crore (Rs 3.25 billion) capacity building project on food safety and quality control of drugs, he added.