KUALA LUMPUR: The Health Ministry has refuted claims that Pharmaniaga Bhd is the sole concessionaire in the country which supplies biopharmaceutical products.
Minister Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad said it is incorrect to state that Pharmaniaga is the only concession holder as there are also other vendors supplying directly to all health facilities under the ministry.
"As of last year, the ministry’s expenditure for medicines and consumable items were around RM3.3 billion, and about 33.4 per cent (RM1.1 billion) of the Ministry’s pharmaceutical spending was from the concessionaire company, while 6.6 per cent (RM2.2 billion) were purchased by the facilities through central contracts or quotations.
From the figures, it is incorrect to say that Pharmaniaga acts as the only medication suppliers to all public health facilities. The public sector manages medicine procurement through the Finance Ministry procurement policies and directives namely purchases by national tenders, concession agreement and direct purchases by individual health facilities such as hospitals and clinics.”
Dzulkefly was commenting on an article entitled “Review Pharmaniaga’s role, think tank urges government” published by an online portal (not NST Online) on Wednesday,
Dzulkefly said the sourcing of pharmaceutical products is done through a tendering process and the procedure includes product and technical specifications by the pharmaceutical services division, Health Ministry and the selection process of products by the procurement board in the ministry.
“Pharmaniaga’s role in the tendering process is limited to managing advertisement for the bidding process. The selection processes of products were managed by the ministry and as the result of the tendering process, 89 other suppliers were selected in 2017,” he said in a statement issued today.
He also said Pharmaniaga must comply with 18 performance standards under a 10-year concession agreement which monitors the supply, quality of products and requirement of buffer stocks and delivery to ensure continuous supply that is not enforced to other suppliers.
Dzulkefly said the ministry is in the process of reviewing the whole end-to-end supply chain economic, demand and supply issues to achieve better transparency, cost saving and efficiency in supplies availability.
“We on our part will ensure that the supply chain process is efficient, accountable and transparent. It has always been the aspiration of the Pakatan Harapan Government to ensure that we retrieve whatever that is due to the government and to plug any possible leakages.”
The ministry is also committed to provide more transparency in these contracts while being just and fair to all market suppliers through greater opportunities and competitive bids,” he said, adding that a task force should be set up to study concerns and make prompt recommendations on best practices to the ministry.
The online portal reported that Galen Centre for Health and Social Policy has recommended that the government review the role of Pharmaniaga in the public healthcare system claiming that it essentially acts as a middleman.
Its chief executive officer Azrul Mohd Khalib as quoted in the portal said it was rare for countries to rely on a single company to supply biopharmaceutical products for a long period of time.
He said Pharmaniaga is the only concession holder to purchase, store, supply and distribute both branded and generic approved drugs and medical products to 148 government hospitals and 2,871 clinics and district health offices nationwide.