Scarcity of aluminium foil, along with the increase in its price, may cause shortage of many important medications, since their production has become unprofitable.
The pricing of 680 scheduled medication formulations are regulated by the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority. The wholesale price index is used to update prices once a year.
{alcircleadd}
“With the price of aluminium foil increasing by 25 to 30 per cent over the last three months, manufacturing of several drugs has become unviable. Several scheduled drugs may become unavailable, if the situation is not brought under control,” said SL Singla, adviser, Himachal Drug Manufacturers Association.
Aluminium foil has been in limited supply for the past 5-6 months among the pharmaceutical makers.
“There has been an increase of Rs 60 in the price of packaging material over the past 45 days. This has jacked up the production cost at my unit by Rs 15 lakh,” said Singla, a pharma executive whose company utilizes 25 tonnes of aluminium goods each month.
“Due to this, the manufacturers are forced to revise the prices of drugs at short intervals. However, this cannot be done in case of scheduled drugs,” added Singla, who runs MDC Pharmaceuticals at Baddi.
“Production has been hit in China due to power shortage and implementation of strict measures to check carbon footprint. This has hit supplies globally, including in India,” said Sanjay Khurana, a supplier of aluminium foil in the Baddi-Barotiwala-Nalagarh (BBN) industrial belt.
“Domestic producers are more keen on exports and this has created a shortage of aluminium packaging material in the domestic market. The supply is likely to be only about 50 per cent of the domestic demand in October. The situation was almost similar during September and there is no likelihood of any improvement in the near future” added Sanjay Khurana.
Responses
