The Pharmacists' Syndicate launched a campaign on Tuesday to save public sector pharmaceutical companies from losses, which amounted this year to LE139 million.
Syndicate Undersecretary Mostafa al-Wakil said he is collecting data on all factories by considering the size of their production, their strengths and weaknesses, the number of employees and the size of their exports so as to find solutions to their problems and make sure medicine is produced to international quality standards.
“They are under fierce attack by the drug mafia that wants to monopolize the market,” he said.
Wakil said public sector companies produced 85 percent of the market in 1969 when they were first established, adding that they now produce only 6.3 percent due to big investors' attempts to destroy them.
“They were established to provide medicines at reasonable prices for the poor,” he said. “Now foreign companies took control of the market.”
He said the reason they make losses is that they cannot raise prices, while private companies do all the time. “The production cost for them is higher than the selling price,” he explained.
“The Egyptian Company for Medicine Trade used to make profits,” he said. “It should be saved in order to continue to provide medicines at low costs.”
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
