Aimed at providing accessible, standardised and affordable generic medicines, the Pradhan Mantri Bhartiya Janaushadhi Pariyojana (PMBJP) Kendras, which currently offer a product basket of 1,451 drugs and 240 surgical instruments, have added nutraceuticals products, including protein powder and bar, malt-based food supplements and immunity bar for its customers.
Currently there are about 8,675 PMBJP Kendras that have been opened in districts across the country with three IT enabled warehouses functional at Gurugram, Chennai and Guwahati and fourth one is ready to start operations at Surat.
The government has also set a target to increase the number of PMBJKs to 10,500 by the end of March 2025 along with a total of six warehouses.
Further, 39 distributors have been appointed across the country to support the supply of medicines to remote and rural areas, said an official at Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers.
“Point-of-Sale application for value added services has been implemented by Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Bureau of India (PMBI) to monitor end-to-end supply chain management system. All warehouses have SAP-based inventory management system and the demand forecasting is done through the said system so as to place orders as per the desired inventory levels,’’ he added.
Under the PMBJP being implemented by the Department of Pharmaceuticals, a medicine is priced on the principle of maximum of 50% of average price of the top three brands of the said medicine. Thus, the prices of Jan Aushadhi Medicines are cheaper at least by 50% and in some cases, by 80% to 90% of the market price of the branded medicines.
In India, National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority under the Department of Pharmaceuticals regulates the prices of all drugs – whether branded or generic. While it fixes the ceiling price of scheduled medicines specified in the first schedule of the Drugs (Prices Control) Order, 2013, in case of non-scheduled medicines, the manufactures are free to fix Maximum Retail Price (MRP) of the drug. However, DPCO provides that the same do not increase by more than 10% of their MRP during the preceding twelve months.
Meanwhile, giving information about how the Kendras did during the COVID-19 pandemic the Central government said that in spite of problems in procurement and logistics due to lockdown the Kendras delivered a record ₹ 52 crore worth of affordable and quality medicines to the public during April 2020. This led to total savings of approximately ₹ 300 crore of common citizens as Jan Aushdhi Kendra’s medicines are cheaper by 50 to 90% of the average market price
.”In its fight against COVID-19, over 900 quality generic-medicines and 154 surgical equipment and consumable was available at affordable prices,’’ it added.
In the financial year 2020-21, Bureau of Pharma PSUs of India clocked sales turnover of ₹665.83 crore despite the lock down and testing times. This, according to the Ministry, has led to savings of approximately ₹ 4,000 crores of the common citizens of the country. “PMBJKs, BPPI, distributors and other stakeholders came together to work against the current wave of COVID-19 pandemic,” added a senior official at the Ministry.
