Raggie Jessy Rithaudeen
چريتا سبنر د سباليق ۏكسين چوۏيد-19 خيري جمال الدين بنتو مليسيا بلي
A Belgian minister has blown the lid off a sensitive and commercial secret, i.e., the price the European Union has agreed to pay for leading Covid vaccines, bringing into question the price the Government of Malaysia (GoM) is said to be paying for its supply.
According to The Guardian, Belgium’s budget state secretary, Eva De Bleeker, posted the ex-factory price list on Twitter, with the amounts of each vaccine that the country intends to buy from the EU.
The tweet was quickly deleted, but not soon enough to prevent interested parties taking screenshots, which have now made it public knowledge.
The Guardian wrote:
While campaigners for access to medicines were delighted at the transparency, pharmaceutical companies were not.
Pfizer complained of a breach of confidentiality. “These prices are covered by a confidentiality clause in the contract with the European commission,” said Elisabeth Schraepen, the US drugmaker’s spokeswoman for the Benelux region to the Belgian daily Le Soir.
The price list revealed that the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is the cheapest and Moderna is the most expensive – as was already known. But the details allow countries that may be negotiating with the vaccine manufacturers to take a harder line.
This is the list of what the EU is paying:
Oxford/AstraZeneca: €1.78 (£1.61).
Johnson & Johnson: $8.50 (£6.30).
Sanofi/GSK: €7.56.
Pfizer/BioNTech: €12.
CureVac: €10.
Moderna: $18.
One Euro is currently going for RM4.96, making the Pfizer vaccine worth RM59.52 per shot.
The Malaysian population is currently estimated to be 32.7 million people, making the cost of vaccinating 70 per cent of these people RM1.36 billion.
But Khairy Jamaluddin insists that it costs RM3 billion to vaccinate that number, which is what the GoM is said to be paying for supplies from Pfizer and another company which isn’t Moderna.
Moderna has the highest ex-factory price on list, while everything else is considerably lower than the product Pfizer has to offer.
Khairy confirmed, the GoM’s dealing is on a G-to-B (Government to Business) basis, and prices procured are ex-factory and do not entail middleman or third party charges, including storage and delivery costs.
This effectively means that the ex-factory cost for purchases by the GoM is way lower than RM1.36 billion, or RM1 billion, which is definitely a safe estimate given that Malaysia isn’t purchasing only from Pfizer.
So why has the GoM set aside an additional RM2 billion for purchases? Is Khairy going to tell us that transportation and storage costs will add up to that, or is there something else he is not telling us?
Worse, rumours are abound that a certain Datuk associated with Khairy, Zaki Zahid, is set to gain a 10 per cent commission from the purchases of these vaccines, meaning, if the GoM spends RM3 billion, his commission would be worth RM100 – 300 million, depending on how much the GoM actually spends on said purchases.
Is this true?
To be continued…
NOTA: SAYA MEMBUAT PENGUMUMAN-PENGUMUMAN PENTING DARI MASA KE SEMASA EKSKLUSIF MENERUSI SALURAN TELEGRAM BERIKUT:
