According to a notice issued Monday on the website of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the production costs for 21 categories of western drugs and seven Chinese patent medicines will be probed by local pricing authorities.

All factories and companies producing or importing the medicines, according to the notice, should report objectively the entire cost of production and import for 2005. Pharmaceutical companies should keep paperwork detailing production costs, retail prices, sales and profit figures.?

An NDRC official who declined to be named said the probe didn't mean any immediate adjustment to the price of medicines. However, the results will be saved in the NDRC's drug price database as reference for pricing in the future.

Some antibiotic and anti-tumor medicines have been excluded from the probe, as a program has been drawn up to readjust their prices and it will be published shortly.

(China.org.cn by Zhang Yunxing, April 26, 2006)