With anti-competitive practices of global pharma companies increasingly coming under regulatory scrutiny internationally, Indian public interest groups and the domestic medicine makers complain that India's competitive laws are not equipped to face a similar situation of monopoly in the sales of patent protected medicines in the country.
The measures are part of a package of nine concessions that were suggested by the commerce ministry around eight weeks ago and are awaiting cabinet approval.
Alliance Lumiere, owned by NDTV Imagine, the entertainment company of NDTV, is all set to launch an international film channel. The films will be distributed in India and abroad. They will also be marketed through DVDs and VCDs for private viewing.
Over 300 life-saving medicines may become cheaper by at least 25 per cent, if the finance ministry considers a proposal by its chemicals and fertilisers counterpart to provide customs and excise duty waivers on all drugs that are part of the National List of Essential Medicines. The chemicals and fertilisers ministry proposal has been supported by pharma companies, who have also agreed to pass on the benefits of such waivers by slashing retail prices.
Reliance, Lifecell and Cryobank have emerged leaders in the stem cell banking sector.
Drug makers join the chyawanprash bandwagon with sugar-free variants.
The Nano price point would see a 65 per cent increase in the number of families that can afford a car.
Refusing to divulge identity of the companies, sources indicated that three of them are based in Delhi and the remaining are in Maharashtra.
Reworks proposal submitted to Foreign Investment Promotion Board.
Chidambaram to meet ministries' financial advisors, PM's economic council.
The price regulatory pharma body has set limits to the extent pharma companies can increase the price of medicines in a year.
Karmayog, a leading NGO which recently carried out a CSR rating of top 500 Indian companies, says that only two drug companies - Dr Reddy's and Lupin - have done work on this front. While the two firms scored three out of five, 30 other drug firms failed to perform satisfactorily. Nine of the companies, including leading ones such as Nicholas Piramal, Panacea and Glenmark did not score at all.
Rathod, an IP professional attached to a global generic pharmaceutical company, draws hundreds of readers from across the IP space to his genericpharmaceuticals.blogspot.com.
Even as a lack of clarity in regulations is preventing Indian medical device manufacturers from making their presence felt in the $2 billion domestic medical equipment market, foreign players, mostly from the United States, are increasingly finding the country a preferred destination.
Days after medical representatives said their employers were flouting the government's drug-pricing norms, the pharmaceutical industry has decided to clip their wings. These companies want them to be no longer recognised as "workmen," a classification that gives them the right to form trade unions.
India-born steel magnate LN Mittal met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on December 8 to discuss his plans in the oil and gas sector in India. The meeting has led to reports that Mittal is interested in taking over Cairn India's assets, which includes prospective oil discovery in Rajasthan.
Compliance levels in India have improved significantly over the past few years with 85 per cent of the country's 31.9 million tax payers filing income tax returns in 2006-07. But this is still below the near-100 per cent compliance levels in developed countries.
In another setback to Big Pharma, US drug major Eli Lilly's blockbuster erectile dysfunction drug Cialis (generic name:Tadalafil) has failed to qualify for a product patent in India after the basic constituent of the medicine was found to be a known substance, developed and patented by Indian scientists 32 years ago.
With 1,610 cases of detention of food and medicine consignments at various US ports of entry during the last 11 months, the products of Indian origin received the second largest number of import refusal reports (IRRs).
Pharma makers 'making a mockery' of price control, they say.
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