A Parliamentary panel on Tuesday asked the Department of Pharmaceuticals to finalise a new phama policy without delay and evolve a mechanism to regulate prices of new imported patented drugs.

The Committee on Health and Family Welfare held that with Working Groups having already submitted their reports, the new pharma policy should be finalised "without further loss of time".

Noting that new imported patented drugs are sold at "supernormal" profits, whereas prices of the same medicines are considerably lower in other countries, the Committee recommended the "issue of price regulation of imported molecules being sold in the country at high prices will be taken care of in the new pharmaceutical policy which is currently under finalisation".

Rejecting the Pharma Secretary's submission that there is no price control of a patented drug for open market, the Committee said "it would like to observe that India as a sovereign country has every right to decide the prices of drugs which are sold in the open market."

Expressing concern over lack of mechanism to regulate prices of new imported patented drugs, the Committee, headed by Brajesh Pathak, held the issue "too urgent to be left open-ended" and asked the Department of Pharmaceuticals to resolve the issue within six months.

"The Committee would also like the Department put in place an effective mechanism to enable the use of international price benchmarks in such cases and limit the price of an imported drug by comparison with the price of the same drug in other countries and thus check windfall profits made by importers on selling imported molecules at exhorbitant prices in the country," it recommended.