Sri Lanka Medicine Price Lookup — NMRA Maximum Retail Price (MRP)

Sri Lanka regulates the retail price of a defined list of essential medicines through the National Medicines Regulatory Authority (NMRA). The legal basis is the NMRA Act No. 5 of 2015 — Section 119 empowers the Minister, on the recommendation of the Authority, to fix a Maximum Retail Price (MRP) for any registered medicine by Order published in the Government Gazette. Section 120 makes selling above the gazetted MRP a regulatory offence punishable by fine and cancellation of the pharmacy's registration.

The originating price-control schedule was published as Extraordinary Gazette No. 2127/35 on 2019-06-21. It set MRPs for essential medicines across the categories most relevant to ordinary household budgets: pain and fever (paracetamol, ibuprofen, diclofenac); common antibiotics (amoxicillin, ciprofloxacin, metronidazole, azithromycin); blood-pressure control (losartan, amlodipine, bisoprolol, enalapril); diabetes (metformin, glipizide); cholesterol (atorvastatin); allergy (cetirizine, loratadine); stomach/acid (omeprazole, ranitidine); asthma (salbutamol inhaler); thyroid (levothyroxine); and rehydration (ORS sachets). Subsequent revision gazettes have adjusted some prices to reflect currency and supply-chain shifts; the price label on the pack always carries the current MRP and is the live authoritative source at point of sale.

What MRP means in practice.MRP is a ceiling, not a fixed price. A pharmacy may sell below MRP — many chains do, on high-volume medicines like Panadol or Cetirizine. A pharmacy may not sell above MRP. The MRP is inclusive of every applicable tax (VAT, SSCL, NBT, stamp duty) — a separately added tax line that pushes the total above the printed MRP is over-charging and is reportable. The MRP is uniform across the country: there is no urban premium, no tourist surcharge, no “rural delivery” supplement on a price-controlled medicine.

How the lookup works. This page bundles 30of the most-searched price-controlled medicines as a curated client-side dataset. Each record carries the generic INN, the most common Sri Lankan brand names, the strength, the pack size, the per-pack MRP, the derived per-unit MRP (per tab, per ml, per dose), and the gazette reference. The search runs a deterministic token-prefix score against the INN, the brand list, and the record id, with an exact substring match preferred over a prefix match. Typing “panadol” matches the paracetamol record via the brand list; typing “losartan” matches the two losartan records (50 mg and 100 mg). Everything happens in your browser — no query is sent to a server.

Cross-check. The derived per-unit MRP (mrpPerUnit) is recomputed from the gazetted pack MRP and the pack size at data- construction time, so the two figures can never drift. AverifyPerUnitAgainstFormulahelper is exposed for external auditing — it reproduces the per-unit calculation and reports the cent-level difference against the stored value. For the dataset shipped here, the helper returns 0 cents across every record, which is the “verified by formula” stamp the page surfaces.

What this tool is not. It is not medical advice. It will not tell you whether to take a medicine, in what dose, with what food, or alongside what other prescription. It will not warn you about contra-indications or interactions. For clinical advice, talk to a registered community pharmacist or your doctor — both are listed under section 9 of the NMRA Act as the licensed source of dispensing and advice. This tool answers exactly one question: what is the legal ceiling a pharmacy may charge for this medicine right now in Sri Lanka.

Three scenarios that map to common Sri Lankan over-the-counter and prescription purchases, worked end-to-end from the gazetted pack MRP down to the per-unit ceiling. Try each in the calculator above — the numbers should match to the cent.

• National Medicines Regulatory Authority (NMRA) — official portal and price-controlled medicines list
• NMRA Act No. 5 of 2015 — Section 119 (Maximum Retail Price) and Section 120 (penalties)
• Ministry of Health, Nutrition & Indigenous Medicine — Sri Lanka
• NMRA Complaints — how to report a pharmacy charging above MRP
• Government of Sri Lanka — Department of Government Printing (Extraordinary Gazettes archive)

MRPs in this v1 dataset are drawn from NMRA Extraordinary Gazette No. 2127/35 of 2019-06-21, issued under Section 119 of the NMRA Act No. 5 of 2015. Subsequent revision gazettes may have adjusted some figures; the printed MRP label on the pack and the live NMRA portal are the current authoritative sources.30 medicines are bundled covering the most-searched essential drugs across pain, antibiotics, blood pressure, diabetes, cholesterol, allergy, stomach acid, asthma, thyroid, and rehydration. Last reconciled 2026-05-17.