NEW DELHI: Prices of around 100 medicines, including those for Alzheimer’s, diabetes and hypertension, could rise by up to 10% after they were removed from the national list of essential medicines . Though the move is likely to impact consumers, it comes as a relief to drug makers reeling under stringent price regulation for over a year.Overruling a previous order by the drug price regulator, the Centre has allowed firms to hike prices of medicines that are no longer part of the NLEM and hence don’t fall under direct price control. Earlier, the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority ( NPPA ) — which monitors prices of medicines in the country on behalf of the government — had prohibited price hike of such products for at least a year.After a number of companies approached the government against the NPPA order, the Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP) has directed the pricing authority to withdraw its earlier order. This is for the first time in one and a half years when the Centre has allowed a hike in prices of a large number of medicines, the last one on around 500 drugs having come in April 2015 based on increase in wholesale price index.The government directly regulates prices of medicines that are part of NLEM by capping their ceiling prices at the simple average of all drugs in a particular segment with market share of at least 1%. For all other medicines, companies are allowed to hike prices by up to 10% in a year.In December last year, the government revised the NLEM to expand the span of price control from 684 to 875 medicines. At the same time around 100 drugs were also dropped from the list as more commonly used drugs were included to it.This year, the NPPA has revised prices for medicines on ten different instances bringing down prices of several commonly used medicines including those for hypertension, diabetes and cancer. Of the 875 drugs, the NPPA has so far capped prices of over 500 new drugs which are part of the revised list.However, officials and industry executives say, even the latest move may not have a major impact on consumers because most of the drugs that have been dropped out of the NLEM have alternatives with better cost effectiveness and efficacy. Public health experts, however, argue that companies may push sales of such medicines through doctors once they are out of price regulation.At present, around 30% of the Rs 1 lakh crore pharmaceutical market is under direct price control.