The tax on drug makers' sales, applied starting October, should have brought the first revenues into the Health Ministry's account by January 25, but pharmaceutical companies do not know yet when exactly these payments will be made, after the ministry started a public debate on the enforcement guidelines as late as Friday.

The tax on producers' sales, also called clawback, is among the last moves made by former minister Ion Bazac and stipulates that any producer that has prescription drugs in its portfolio should contribute between 5 and 11% of these sales to the ministry's budget. According to the Health Ministry, the sums producers should pay for the fourth quarter of 2009 amount to some 100m RON (23m euros).

"If the norms had been published in the Official Gazette on 25th of January (yesterday i.e.), payments should have been made on the same day. If they are published on Tuesday (today i.e.), we no longer know when we should pay," says Sorin Popescu, vice-president of the Romanian Association of International Drug Makers (ARPIM) and a foreign relations officer with Merck Sharp & Dohme.

Health Ministry representatives had not provided any comment by edition's close.

The ministry will set the sums to be taxed on the basis of a liability statement and Popescu states this will be done at the price that includes distributors' charges.

The tax should add 570m RON (134m euros) to the Health Ministry's budget in 2010.

Producers' representatives say there are some problems about the enforcement guidelines, which need to be fixed. Sorin Popescu says the guidelines do not clearly specify if the tax is applied on the revenues in a quarter or on invoiced sales as both ways are specified therein.

In Popescu's opinion, another problem is that producers report sales to distributors at a price including distributors' charges, but part of th