Department of Pharmaceuticals notifies Uniform Code for Pharmaceutical Marketing Practices (UCPMP), 2024 and subsequent amendments
Department of Pharmaceuticals notifies Uniform Code for Pharmaceutical Marketing Practices (UCPMP), 2024 (replacing UCPMP, 2015) and subsequently amends it in September 2025 to streamline marketing-expenditure disclosure.
- UCPMP, 2024 is a code notified by the Department of Pharmaceuticals to govern ethical marketing practices by pharmaceutical companies, with provisions for ECPMPs, Ethics Officers, complaint redressal and appellate mechanisms, and disclosure obligations.
- The September 2025 amendments streamlined implementation and disclosure by requiring pharmaceutical companies to submit annual statements about marketing expenditure incurred on the relevant platform.
What happened
The Department of Pharmaceuticals (Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers) notified the Uniform Code for Pharmaceutical Marketing Practices (UCPMP), 2024 on 12.03.2024. UCPMP, 2024 superseded UCPMP, 2015 and introduced revised provisions to strengthen ethical marketing practices by pharmaceutical companies.
The Department of Pharmaceuticals also amended UCPMP, 2024 in September 2025. The amendments focused on streamlining implementation and disclosure requirements by introducing annual reporting on marketing expenditure on the relevant platform.
UPSC exam framing can treat UCPMP, 2024 as a regulatory ethics design: it builds internal oversight (ECPMPs, Ethics Officers), procedural accountability (complaints and an appellate route), and transparency (self-declarations and marketing-expenditure disclosure), with September 2025 amendments streamlining annual expenditure statements.