Di­ver­si­fied, pub­licly list­ed Agos­ti­ni said yes­ter­day that the com­pa­ny does not dom­i­nate the pro­cure­ment of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals for the pub­lic sec­tor or the lo­cal phar­ma­cy sec­tor.

The com­pa­ny is­sued a paid ad­ver­tise­ment in to­day’s news­pa­per ad­dress­ing what it de­scribed as grow­ing pub­lic con­cerns over the state of the lo­cal phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­dus­try and of­fer­ing de­tails on the op­er­a­tions of its sub­sidiaries Aven­ta and Su­per­Pharm.

The com­pa­ny said its in­ten­tion was to con­tribute fac­tu­al in­for­ma­tion amid height­ened de­bate about pric­ing, dis­tri­b­u­tion and ac­cess to phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.

In the ad­ver­tise­ment, Agos­ti­ni not­ed that the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion sec­tor is reg­u­lat­ed and com­pet­i­tive, with more than 70 reg­is­tered dis­trib­u­tors sup­ply­ing med­i­cines across T&T.

It em­pha­sised that pub­lic-sec­tor pro­cure­ment is con­duct­ed through a for­mal ten­der process gov­erned by the Pro­cure­ment Act, with awards de­ter­mined by price, com­pli­ance and trans­paren­cy re­quire­ments. For the 2023–2025 ten­der cy­cle, Aven­ta se­cured 34.3 per cent of the awards by val­ue and 16.6 per cent by num­ber of prod­ucts sup­plied.

The com­pa­ny al­so high­light­ed the size of the pri­vate re­tail mar­ket, which com­pris­es more than 500 phar­ma­cies na­tion­wide. Su­per­Pharm and Mphar­ma­cy, while part of the Agos­ti­ni Group, were de­scribed as op­er­at­ing sep­a­rate­ly from Aven­ta, with the two chains rep­re­sent­ing the sec­ond-largest re­tail­er of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, hold­ing an es­ti­mat­ed 18 per cent mar­ket share across 20 out­lets.

Agos­ti­ni un­der­scored that both Aven­ta and Su­per­Pharm are sub­sidiaries of its pub­licly list­ed, cen­tu­ry-old group. It stat­ed that the com­pa­nies “wel­come re­views by reg­u­la­to­ry au­thor­i­ties” and sup­port all mea­sures that build trust, ac­count­abil­i­ty and pa­tient ac­cess to af­ford­able health­care prod­ucts through­out the na­tion­al sys­tem.

The ad­ver­tise­ment fol­lowed claims made ear­li­er this week be­fore the Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee (PAAC) by the pres­i­dent of the Pri­vate Phar­ma­cy Re­tail Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion (PPR­BA), Glen­wayne Su­chit.  

Ap­pear­ing be­fore the com­mit­tee chaired by House Speak­er, Jagdeo Singh, Su­chit ar­gued that some cit­i­zens can no longer af­ford med­ica­tion from pri­vate phar­ma­cies due to what he de­scribed as a grow­ing mo­nop­oly that ex­pand­ed af­ter the COVID-19 pe­ri­od. He said this al­leged con­cen­tra­tion of mar­ket con­trol has con­tributed to un­fair pric­ing, re­strict­ed sup­ply and the col­lapse of dozens of small phar­ma­cies.

Su­chit pre­sent­ed to the PAAC what he de­scribed as an ev­i­dence-based analy­sis in­di­cat­ing Aven­ta alone con­trols 74 per cent of the pri­vate phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal mar­ket, while two com­pa­nies to­geth­er com­mand half of the pub­lic-sec­tor ten­der mar­ket. He said this lev­el of con­trol has con­strained ac­cess to crit­i­cal med­i­cines for low-in­come pa­tients.