PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Aven­ta has de­nied that it has re­ceived pref­er­en­tial treat­ment in terms of pay­ments by NIPDEC.

In an in­ter­nal memo dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 27, the com­pa­ny ad­dressed staff fol­low­ing a Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee (PAAC) meet­ing on Feb­ru­ary 23, when Nipdec gen­er­al man­ag­er Vyas Ram­phalie told the com­mit­tee that be­tween 2023 and 2025, he had been in­struct­ed by for­mer Health Min­is­ter to pri­ori­tise pay­ments to Aven­ta, the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion and man­u­fac­tur­ing arm of the Agos­ti­ni Group, over all oth­er com­pa­nies.

Deyals­ingh has since de­nied the al­le­ga­tion.

The in­ter­nal memo to Aven­ta staff said, “Due to eco­nom­ic con­straints over the past few years, Aven­ta, like many oth­er com­pa­nies who ser­vice the pub­lic sec­tor, has ex­pe­ri­enced de­layed pay­ments for goods and ser­vices that it sup­plies to the pub­lic health­care sys­tem. While Aven­ta can­not com­ment on pay­ments made to oth­er sup­pli­ers, our da­ta shows that over­due pay­ments from the pub­lic sec­tor, es­pe­cial­ly those old­er than 120 days, have got­ten sig­nif­i­cant­ly worse over the past decade.”

The in­ter­nal memo, which was signed by Aven­ta CEO James Walk­er and Aven­ta Trinidad and To­ba­go CEO Pe­ter Welch, con­tin­ued, “Crit­i­cal­ly, for the pe­ri­od 2023 to 2025 where it has been al­leged that NIPDEC was in­struct­ed to give Aven­ta pref­er­en­tial treat­ment, the da­ta shows that de­lays in pay­ments in fact, got worse.”

The com­pa­ny told its staff that while it ac­knowl­edged that de­lay in pay­ments did neg­a­tive­ly im­pact busi­ness, it nev­er made a re­quest for pref­er­en­tial treat­ment.

“Late pay­ments have a di­rect im­pact on our busi­ness, its cash­flows and the bank­ing fa­cil­i­ties we de­pend on. We know how­ev­er that drugs and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal prod­ucts are crit­i­cal, es­sen­tial and, in some cas­es, a mat­ter of life and death. The fa­cil­i­ties that we con­tin­ue to ex­tend to the gov­ern­ment re­flect this. Over the years we have in­di­vid­u­al­ly, and along­side oth­er phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies, through the Trinidad & To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try & Com­merce’s Health & Well­ness Com­mit­tee, had nu­mer­ous dis­cus­sions with NIPDEC where we have ad­vo­cat­ed for im­proved pay­ment terms. We want to make it clear, how­ev­er, that we have nev­er asked for pref­er­en­tial treat­ment from NIPDEC or the Min­istry of Health.”

Aven­ta had pre­vi­ous­ly pub­lic re­butted claims by head of the Pri­vate Phar­ma­cy Re­tail Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion (PPR­BA), Glen­wayne Su­chit, that the con­glom­er­ate had a mo­nop­oly in the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­dus­try.

In De­cem­ber, Agos­ti­ni took out ad­ver­tise­ments in lo­cals news­pa­pers, in which it stat­ed the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion sec­tor is reg­u­lat­ed and com­pet­i­tive, with more than 70 reg­is­tered dis­trib­u­tors sup­ply­ing med­i­cines across T&T.

Last month at the group's an­nu­al meet­ing at the Hy­att Re­gency Agos­ti­ni Group CEO, Bar­ry Davis, pub­licly dis­missed al­le­ga­tions that the com­pa­ny holds a mo­nop­oly or con­trols an over­whelm­ing share of the lo­cal phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion mar­ket.