Singapore: The Indian drug price control order (DPCO) 2013 that has been established in order to control the prices of medicines, does not cover over eight percent of the medicines in the market.

The National Pharmaceutical Pricing Policy of India had in 2003 been directed by the country's Supreme Court to identify essential and life saving drugs and ensure that they came under the price control. However, the DPCO that was announced in May 2013 does not include many drugs.

Many life-saving medicines that are crucial to India's disease profile including anti-cancer drugs, expensive antibiotics and drugs needed for organ transplantation have been left out of the DPCO 2013.

The government has mentioned in its affidavit filed in court that the market value and share of medicines covered by DPCO is just 18 percent of the country's pharma market.

The current DPCO further does not cover combinations of drugs, as a result a lot of diabetes and hypertension drugs will move out of price control as they are used in combination.