SK Pharmacy does not save budget money - Zhursunov

ASTANA. KAZINFORM According to the Deputy Chairman of the Board of NCE Atameken Rustam Zhursunov, work of SK Pharmacy does not provide budgetary savings. He said that during a conference on the results of an external analysis of corruption risks in healthcare in the Agency for Public Service and Anti-Corruption.

"We should not forget that we created SK Pharmacy using Malaysian experience.Two tasks were set, of which the first one was to save budget funds.Where is the saving? In 2010, 31.3 billion tenge, and in 2016, 115 billion tenge (spent -Ed.). And SK Pharmacy acts as a buffer. According to our calculations, there is about 9 percent extra charges. We checked and the monopoly income was KZT26.7 billion. And the fine was only 1.3 billion tenge. Where are online sales? Where is prequalification? We don't see any international standards here", Zhursunov said.

According to him, the NCE Atameken questiones the appropriateness of the existence of a single drugs procurement operator in its present form.

He stressed the sensitiveness of the issue. And NCE Atameken discussed this issue and made recommendations, however nothing has changed in terms of procurement.

It should be reminded that from October to December last year antimonopoly authorities conducted an investigation of violations of antitrust laws by SK Pharmacy which established there was an abuse of dominant position.

The meeting was held by the Agency jointly with the NCE Atameken within the framework of the first project aimed at minimizing and eliminating the causes and conditions that contribute to the corruption related crimes in healthcare.