Ibuprofen prices slashedNEW DELHI: India's National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA), which controls drug prices, said on Friday it had reduced the prices of three bulk drugs ibuprofen, erythromycin stearate and erythromycin ethyl succinate. Bulk drugs are raw materials from which medicine formulations are made. The NPPA has cut the price of bulk drug ibuprofen from Rs 442 to Rs 365 per kg, erythromycin stearate from Rs 3,488 per kg to Rs 2,604 and erythromycin ethyl succinate from Rs 5,714 per kg to Rs 4,392 per kg, a statement said.Govt curbs cheap sugar importsNEW DELHI: In a bid to protect the domestic sugar industry from cheap imports, the government has brought imported sugar under the monthly release mechanism, wherein the centre fixes the quantity of sugar to be unloaded by domestic mills in a given month."With this measure sale of domestic sugar and that of imported sugar in the domestic free sale market are brought at par," an official release said here. Thedecision to introduce release mechanism for sale of imported sugar in domestic market has been taken under the Sugar Control Amendment Order, 1999. Following complaints of large scale imports of cheap sugar from countries like Pakistan, China and Brazil, government had earlier this year amended the Sugar Control Order to enable the centre to subject imported sugar to the same control as applicable to domestically produced sugar.Refinance is not housing finance: RBIMUMBAI: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has banned banks from including loans sanctioned for takeover of housing loans granted by other entities, for the purpose of achieving housing finance allocation. In a circular to banks, RBI said such disbursements should not be included in the quarterly housing statement and instead, should be shown as a sub-item under the heading `Housing loans taken over from other banks'. "We advise that since the bank which originally sanctioned the housing loan to an individual borrower directly or througha housing finance intermediary would have included these loans under the housing finance statement, it has been decided that the bank which takes over housing loans would not be entitled to include such disbursements for achieving housing finance allocation."
