Prices kept on increasing because the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) did not cap the MRP even after #N95 masks were notified as essential commodity under the Essential Commodities Act.
GOI, state govts & big hospitals procure majority of N95 masks from Venus Health Safety, one of their nodal manufacturers. More than 80% of Venus’s production is being procured directly by govts. But still, healthcare workers in hospitals are facing acute shortage of these masks
Now, after the court’s intervention, NPPA claimed that prices have been reduced voluntarily by manufacturers & suppliers. For a basic N95 mask, Venus 4400 style, price has been reduced from ₹165 to ₹95. Mind you,the so-called reduced MRP is also 450% more than the January price
On one hand, there’s shortage in hospitals; on other hand, we found black market of Venus’s N95 masks thriving where people with no licences were hoarding lakhs of these masks worth crores & selling them to anyone @ ₹172-180/ piece, that’s 80-90% > price decided by authorities
Black marketeers alleged, “Venus & distributors are involved in this scam. Everybody profits. And since there’s an artificial scarcity being created in the market, the ones hoarding lakhs of masks are kingmakers.”
The black marketeers only deal in cash. They made bills for Rs 90 per piece, with the rest to be paid in cash. This is the scam flourishing openly under the nose of the authorities
Venus’s MD told us that black marketeers are using a fake domain to trade their products. We dug deeper and found that the QR code behind the packets sold in the black market take us to Venus’s original domain.
The question is, where’s the stock coming from? And who’s hand-in-glove with these mask mafias and profiteering by looting the country even during a pandemic?
