Nadezhda Sharavskaya summed up the intermediary results of FAS efforts in regulating prices for vital medicinal drugs

Speaking at the International Business Medical-and-Pharmaceutical Forum, Deputy Head of FAS Department for Control over Social Sphere and Trade, Nadezhda Sharavskaya, said that after transferring the powers of the Federal Tariff Service to the Federal Antimonopoly Service, FAS had considered 3500 draft ceiling ex-works prices for medicinal drugs, of which 3460 draft prices were approved.

“Overall, FAS has granted nearly 65% petitions for registering ceiling prices. At the same time, a lot of them are refused or returned to the Ministry of Health Care for the procedure to make changes to the Price Register without economic analysis. We are actively developing judicial practice on price registration – FAS has already won 9 proceedings. When companies disagree with the price decisions, they can appeal them because only Courts can confirm legitimacy of the actions of the antimonopoly authority or the Ministry of Health Care”, emphasized Nadezhda Sharavskaya.

Deputy Head of FAS Department for Control over Social Sphere and Trade also discussed the work of the antimonopoly body upon the results of the Stage I of an international analysis of medicinal drug prices. FAS revealed overrated prices for 48 drugs from the list of vital and essential drugs in comparison with the prices for the same drugs, identified by the antimonopoly body in the reference countries. 3 foreign countries decided not to wait for the outcome of the investigation and voluntarily decreased prices for 12 drug. Russian drug manufacturers also joined the price reduction initiative.

“To improve price registration, today we should form a simple and “transparent” mechanism of decision-making on price registration and move to using the indicative method of pricing, fully rejecting the costs method”, clarified Nadezhda Sharavskaya.