A fixed-basket Essential Medicines Price Index for Pakistan: construction and first readings, July to October 2026

Research Brief MIB-RB-2026-003 · version 1.0 · published 27 October 2026 · MedInfoBase Research Team

A transparent, fixed basket of 25 widely supplied medicines. Official prices rose 2.3% between July and October 2026: 100 in July, 101.9 in August, 102.1 in September, 102.3 in October.

Abstract

Pakistan has no regularly published index of medicine prices. This brief introduces a simple, transparent index built from the verified official DRAP price record. The basket is the 25 medicines supplied by the largest number of brands with a verified official price, intravenous fluids excluded, each represented by the one strength, dosage form and pack size supplied by the most brands. For each month, an item's price is the median official price across its brands as of the end of that month; the index is the equal-weighted average of each item's price relative to the base month, July 2026, set to 100. The index read 100.0 in July 2026, 101.93 in August, 102.11 in September and 102.28 in October 2026, a rise of 2.3% over the period. Because the basket is fixed and uses official prices, the index moves only when DRAP-notified prices move, which makes it a clean measure of regulated price change.

Key findings

• Index values: July 2026 = 100.0 (base); August 2026 = 101.93; September 2026 = 102.11; October 2026 = 102.28.
• Official prices of the basket rose 2.3% between July and October 2026.
• Most of the movement occurred between July and August (+1.9%), consistent with the 3,025 official price changes recorded in August 2026.
• The basket contains 25 medicines, each at one standard presentation, with a verified official price from at least three brands in every month of the series.
• The index uses the median price across brands, so a single very cheap or very dear brand does not move it.

Method

Basket selection: all validated, published packs with a verified official DRAP price as of 27 October 2026 were grouped by generic medicine and by presentation (strength, dosage form, pack size, compared case-insensitively). Intravenous fluids were excluded. The 25 generic medicines with the most brands were selected, each represented by its single most widely supplied presentation; each selected presentation has at least three brands. Monthly price: for each basket item and each month from July 2026, the official price in force for each brand at the end of the month was taken from the price history, and the median across brands was computed; an item-month is used only if at least three brands had a price in force. Index: each item's monthly median is divided by its July 2026 median and multiplied by 100; the index is the unweighted average of the 25 item values. July 2026 is the first month in which every item had a price for at least three brands and is therefore the base.

Limitations

The series is short, four months, and should be read as the start of a monitoring series rather than a trend. The basket is chosen by number of brands, a proxy for how widely a medicine is supplied, not by consumption or clinical importance; it is not the WHO Model List. Equal weighting means a cheap and a dear item move the index equally. Official maximum retail prices are not pharmacy prices and say nothing about availability. The underlying record is the validated subset of the DRAP list. The basket is fixed for comparability; it will be reviewed annually, and any change will be published with a new base.

Data availability

The live index, its chart and the current basket with each item's base and latest median price are on the Essential Medicines Price Index page, which updates automatically. A dated CSV of all current prices and of all price changes is on the Observatory data page. Source data: Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan.

Essential Medicines Price Index (live) Download the data

How to cite

Keywords: price index; essential medicines; Pakistan; DRAP; medicine affordability; price monitoring. Free to read, share and cite with attribution. Numbers are a dated snapshot; the live reports on this site update automatically. Corrections: see our corrections policy.

← All research briefs