eBusiness Weekly
Martin Kadzere
Zimbabwe is firming plans to revive its pharmaceutical industry through a cocktail of measures including recapitalisation of CAPS Pharmaceuticals and production of own raw materials for drugs processing, a senior official has said.
Industry and Commerce Minister Dr Sekai Nzenza, told Business Weekly in an interview that Zimbabwe needed a vibrant pharmaceutical industry that should always be prepared to cope with surge in demand resulting from unexpected devastating pandemics such as the coronavirus, which has rattled the world’s largest economies.
Nearly 950 000 people have been infected with the deadly virus and nearly 50 000 people have died worldwide. The World Health Organisation on Wednesday voiced a deep concern about the escalation of new infections and projected confirmed cases could reach one million in the next few days and over 50 000 death worldwide. In Zimbabwe, eight people have tested positive while one succumbed to coronavirus.
Minister Nzenza said the revival of CAPS had been hindered by some legacy issues, which the Government, through her ministry and the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has now moved in to resolve. CAPS used to supply the bulk of the country’s drug needs. The company is among those whose debts were taken over by Zimbabwe Asset Management Company, a special purpose vehicle owned by the RBZ set up to hive off non-performing loans from the banks that were groaning under burden of toxic debts.
However, Fred Mtanda, a shareholder in CAPS challenged the debt take over arguing the central bank had obligation to settle the debt since it owed the pharmaceutical firm. The debt arose after the RBZ ordered CAPS to supply drugs to National Pharmaceuticals in 2008 when Dr Gideon Gono was the governor.
Mutanda argued that there was no basis of transferring the debt to ZAMCO. Government owns 68 percent stake in CAPS and the balance owned by Mtanda.
The disputes have scared away investors who had shown interest in investing in the company.
These include a US company, which launched a bid of as much as US$750 million to acquire the majority shareholding in the company and to recapitalise operations.
“There are some shareholder issues which myself and the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe are now looking into,” said Minister Nzenza.
“We want to make sure the dispute is resolved to allow recapitalisation of the company.”
Minister Nzenza said the Government was also looking at producing its own raw materials such as corn starch, glucose and gelatine which are key in the production of drugs. “Import substitution (of raw materials) is part of the broader strategy to revive CAPS.
We have some of the materials that we need to produce these raw materials but we are lacking equipment and technology. So we will be working with innovations hubs.
“Our industry and the country at large will definitely benefit from these innovative approaches,” said the Minister.
To combat Covid-19, Nzenza said the ministry is working with Caps management to ensure that production of drugs and sanitizers are ready and distributed through Natpham.
The government has ordered raw materials to produce the 80,000 tablets per day. However, the challenge is delay in delivery.
She said the Ministry of Health and Childb Care, will purchase complete finished product for Covid 19 preparedness.
Caps is producing 30 000 bottles of paracetamol syrup this week.
The Government is working with SA supplier to bring in lactose to produce 20 million tablets of paracetamol in addition to the million tablets already delivered to Natpharm.
“We are manufacturing 8,000,000 tablets of Vitamin C this week to be on the market by Friday.
” We are also working on manufacturing Multivitamin Tablets 2,200,000 tablets soon after completing Vitamin,“ said the minister.
