Medicine importers are adamant that they will not accept an imposed reduction in prices, a measure proposed by Finance Minister Tonio Fenech in his Budget speech last week.
"We never accepted price control in the past and neither will we accept it in the present or in the future," Reginald Fava, who chairs the Chamber of Commerce's healthcare business section told The Times.
Last Monday, Finance Minister Tonio Fenech admitted that the voluntary mechanism put in place to bring down medicine prices found to be higher than the EU average was not working and pledged to turn it into a mandatory one unless an alternative was found.
But Mr Fava argued that doing this would be a form of price control. "It is a different terminology to mean the introduction of price control and we are completely against it," he said.
The voluntary mechanism was introduced in 2006 by the Working Committee on the Pricing of Medicinal Products, which asks importers to reduce the prices of medicines found to be higher than the EU average unless they are able justify the existing price level.
A ministry spokesman said the new consumer agency would have the legal power to order a price change if an importer, without justification, refused to voluntarily cut the price of a particular medicine found to be selling at a higher price than the EU average.
Recently two readers complained in letters to the Editor that they had bought medicines from abroad for a much cheaper price than they had purchased them in Malta. One said he bought 30 fungal infection pills for €104 from Malta but found them at less than a third of the price in London, while another said he bought a particular medicine that costs less than €13.08 in Malta for €5.23 from Lisbon
But Mr Fava said that the exercise held to compare local medicinal prices to the EU average revealed only a few products, of the 2,500 to 3,000 currently on sale locally, marked higher than that average.
"We always do our best to keep the price of medicines as low as possible," he said. Although he admitted there were some "cowboys", he said the chamber only represented honest businessmen.
The prices of 61 medicines have been dropped as a result of the voluntary system over the past three years but Mr Fenech complained during his presentation of the Budget that the scheme did not have the desired results.
Mr Fava disagreed, saying it was the committee that was not functioning "for reasons that the government knows about" but which he would not disclose.
He said the chamber did not have any problems with price monitoring and was willing to help the authorities on this aspect.
Chamber for Small and Medium Enterprises general director Vince Farrugia has also voiced disagreement with the government's proposal, telling another newspaper that the chamber would direct its members to withdraw the products affected by price control until forced pricing was removed.
Mr Fava welcomed the announcement by Mr Fenech that the government will be reducing the credit days for medicine importers from 150 to 120.
"Thank you and it's about time," he said, adding that this promise had been made five years ago.
Medicine importers have long complained that they are owed a lot of money by the government. Last month Mr Fenech admitted that the figure was in the region of €20 million - some of which fell outside the 150-day time window.
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