MP: 'State should regulate price of medicines'

The price of pharmaceuticals should be regulated by the state. The Health Ministry and Ministry of Economic Development must determine together the price policy for sale of the same pharmaceuticals in all places of the country at one price, Deputy Chairman of Social Policy Commission of the Azerbaijani Parliament Musa Guliyev said.

According to him, 98% of medicines sold in Azerbaijan are the imported products. That’s why, though it is difficult to regulate their prices, it is possible. It can cause lowering of prices of medicines.

Guliyev said that the other way on regulation of prices of medicines is the, reduction of, or full exemption from, value-added tax applied to the retail sale of medicines: “The value-added tax to the medicines in all countries is either not applied or is applied in amount of less the 50% of value-added tax, because the state budgetary recharge at the expense of ill citizen is considered wrong from the moral point of view i.e. if the budget, recharged at the expense of the medicine, is spent again on ill citizen, it has no sense. That’s why it s important to regulate these prices”.

Guliyev said that the value-added tax in the wholesale sale of the medicines was abolished in Azerbaijan: “But this tax remains in the retail sale”.

He noted that he would raise an issue on it in the autumn session of the Azerbaijani Parliament.


/APA/