H.E. Dr. Ahmed Mohammed Al Saidi, Minister of Health, issued a Ministerial decision NO. 74/2017 stipulated that article (11) from the Ministerial decision No. 86/2000 shall be replaced with the follows:

- The retail price of any medication shall be computing based on the landed product’s price that is Cost, Insurance, and Freight (CIF) as endorsed by the Technical Committee, plus a margin of 45% divided into 19% share for the main distributor, and 26% share for the retail pharmacy.

- This shall be put into effective from 1/6/2017

Dr. Mohammed Hamdan Al Rubai’e, Director General of Pharmaceutical Affairs and Drug Control at the MOH stated that based on the latest decision the profit margin of drugs will be reduced from 55% to 45% starting from June. This reduction will make the retail costs of all the 4300 registered and marketing medications in the Sultanate to drop.

The decision is a continuation of a phased-approach that aimed at unification of CIF prices of the Innovative Medicines across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries.

Earlier, approximately 2600 medications prices were cut in two phases; prices of 1400 drugs were reduced on October 2014 in the first phase, and 1180 of medications prices were reduced in the second phase on June 2015. A focus was made on the chronic diseases drugs, which consists the highest consumption rate in the Omani pharmaceutical market, in a percentage that reached beyond 60% for some medications and 20-40% for most of them.