According to a notice issued Monday on the website of the
National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the production
costs for 21 categories of western drugs and seven Chinese patent
medicines will be probed by local pricing authorities.
All factories and companies producing or importing the
medicines, according to the notice, should report objectively the
entire cost of production and import for 2005. Pharmaceutical
companies should keep paperwork detailing production costs, retail
prices, sales and profit figures.?
An NDRC official who declined to be named said the probe didn't
mean any immediate adjustment to the price of medicines. However,
the results will be saved in the NDRC's drug price database as
reference for pricing in the future.
Some antibiotic and anti-tumor medicines have been excluded from
the probe, as a program has been drawn up to readjust their prices
and it will be published shortly.
(China.org.cn by Zhang Yunxing, April 26, 2006)