One man's meat is another man's poison. The Centre's so called tax reforms in the name of introduction of Goods and Services Tax (GST) may create an acute crisis of medicine in the state as around 80 percent of medicine dealers are yet to a GST license.
Most of the retailers and wholesalers in the state are not buying medicines as a result of which, there is already a crisis of medicine in the city markets with most of the shop owners closing down their shutters. It has become evident on Saturday morning when people were found running from one medicine shop to the other in the city for essential drugs but the sellers were busy in counting their old stocks. Many of these retailers said that they are out of stock and would not be able to buy medicines as they are yet to get a license.
Even those who have licenses are not willing to take a risk as any error in furnishing information may land them in trouble as the Centre has made it a cognizable offence. There are around 70,000 dealers including wholesalers and retailers in the state but around 80 percent of are yet to get the license which would have an adverse effects on the emergency supply of medicines in the markets. Many wholesalers feel that they will have to pay more as there is an increase in tax. But they are not in a position to do so as their profit margin is fixed.
A retailer on condition of anonymity said: "We are not here to bear a loss. Will the drug manufacturers who make 2,000-3,000 times profit compensate us? There is a provision to arrest a retailer if the information about selling of medicines and their prices are not correctly uploaded."
Many of the medicine shops situated adjacent to the state-run hospitals in the city including the SSKM Hospital kept their shutters down resulting in serious inconvenience to the people.
R Saha, owner of a medicine shop in Central Calcutta who kept his shop closed from Saturday morning till the afternoon said: "We do not know how to sell drugs and on what basis."
"We have not uploaded information in the GST portal. Throughout the day we had to check and list the drugs and what category they would fall under. Hence, we were unable to sell medicines to the customers," Saha said. Another medicine seller who runs a shop situated near SSKM Hospital said: "We are yet to get the new price list of medicines as a result of which, we are completely lost. We are unaware of how much to charge a customer and what would be the new prices of medicines." Joydeep Sarkar, All India Chemists and Distributors Federation said: "It was told that health services will be exempted from the GST. Then why is it applied on medicine which is the most essential part?"