High income costs have pushed the medicine price up, according to pharmaceutical traders.

They said the price had increased by between 5 and 10 per cent. Of which the price for domestic drugs surged further than that of foreign products.

In just one month, the medicine price had increased twice, said a medicine shop owner in HCM City's District 10.

Traders said they were forced to increase the price as distributors raised their own due to the higher costs of raw materials and petrol.

In agreement, the Viet Nam Pharmaceutical Association confirmed that during the current time, the prices of both domestic and foreign medicine have been chugged.

However, the change remained minimal and the pharmaceutical market stable, the association reported.

It said that domestic medicine had increased at a rate of 16 per cent while the price of foreign drugs rose by 6.7 per cent.

The association said about 16 per cent of domestic drugs and 6.6 per cent of foreign drugs saw prices increase.

The HCM City Department of Health said it had received many applications asking for price increases since the beginning of this year, many involving unreasonable claims.

For more than one year, HCM City has organised programmes to stabilise medicine prices to great effect.

Currently, about nine companies are joined in these programmes, with 85 types of medicine, nearly double the number last year. — VNS

To effectively run the programmes, the city also regularly inspects stores that join the initiative.

Source: VNS