Drug Regulatory Authority (DRA) has approved up to 4pc hike in price of registered drugs.

The decision came at time when government has decided to amend the Drugs Pricing Policy 2015 in an attempt to burden consumers with the cumulative effect of price increases for life-saving drugs in the past two years to avoid court cases by pharmaceutical companies.

According to this policy, the annual increase in drug prices will be linked with the CPI of the previous financial year with effect from July 1, 2016.