Medtech Industry Flags Overpriced Imported Medical Devices

In an increasing threat to India’s medtech industry, imported medical devices are now facing pressure of being sold at inflated high Maximum Retail Prices (MRPs) or without adequately disclosed prices.

Indigenous manufacturers of medical devices have raised a red flag, saying that hospitals and distributors are promoting foreign goods with high margins and displacing native ones.

The problem is not new but it has become louder since the Indian market is now almost 65 percent saturated with imported medical equipment. Local players claim that they have already been disadvantaged in terms of higher costs of production and an inverted tax system and yet they find competition with overseas products that have the advantage of lack of transparency in terms of pricing. On certain items, the MRP is at multiple times the landed cost which leaves private hospitals with ample margin of profitability at the expense of patients and market fairness.

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It is not only the issue of pricing. Industry insiders caution most of the imported equipment such as imaging and surgical equipment are re-used or used, and create profound concern on the safety of the patient as well as the reliability of such equipment.

Domestic manufacturers are pushing the government to put more strings on rules as India looks towards being self-reliant in the self-empowering vision of the name of making India. They want mandatory MRP labeling, enforcing fair price and having a policy so as to have a level playing field.

The padded MRP of medical devices imported with the inflated MRP is not merely a pricing miscalculation but it poses a risk to the domestic expansion, patient rights, and health care transparency.