chennai continuing with a freebie culture that helped her sweep the recent general election tamil nadu chief minister j jayalalithaa launched amma pharmacy on thursday to sell medicines at a fair price but experts point out that these medical shops may only have a limited impact to begin withan independent analyst who did not want to be identified said these shopsabout 10 were launched on thursdayare similar to the existing cooperative pharmacy outlets in the state these stores have already been effectively functioning in the state for the past one year he said these outlets do cater to people who cannot afford expensive medicines but they are few and far to create any impact in the existing marketon the other hand existing pharmacy outlets worry that this might affect their business the tamil nadu chemists and druggists association said existing players are already reeling under tremendous pressure from the drug prices control order of 2013 its secretary n anandan told et that dpco 2013 has mandated that the ceiling price of essential medicines is fixed based on the simple average of the prices of all brands of that drug that have a market share of at least 1 per centthe national list of essential medicines covered 348 molecules or bulk drugs one of the major issues with dpco 2013 is that it paves way for the increase of roughly 10 per cent of prices on april 1 year after year and this burden only falls on the consumer as the seller cannot go any further on the margins said anandan in such a situation if the government wanted to step in and do something for the common man the state could have made use of the existing pharmacy stores networkanandan said his association has about 30000 privatelyowned outlets as members and the government could have used it to sell specific medicines at stipulated prices but the government said it would expand the number of outlets according to the plan laid out in the state budget we will go according to the budget plan of creating 100 shops across the state mp nirmala principal secretary cooperation food and consumer protection department we cannot reveal by when we will scale up the operation from the 10 outlets that have been launched todaythe 10 outlets launched across seven districts in tamil nadu today were established at a total cost of rs 1 crore with an outlay of rs 10 lakh for each outlet a government release said these government medical shops have all been set up in busy places like bus stands to cater to more people