Essential Drugs Company Limited (EDCL), the state-owned pharmaceutical manufacturer reduced the prices of 33 essential medicines by around 50%* which will save the government approximately Tk 1.16 crore annually.
At a press conference on Wednesday, EDCL Managing Director Samad Mridha announced that the reduced-price medicines include tablets, capsules, oral saline, and injections, under nine categories in total.
He said the company has undertaken various reform measures to boost production and cut costs, including breaking syndicates, laying off 700 unnecessary employees, introducing open tender procedures for raw material purchases, and reducing waste.
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These steps have resulted in an annual production increase worth about Tk 590 million and monthly savings of about Tk 18 crore on raw materials.
Mridha further said two new plants will be set up in the future for vaccine and biological product manufacturing. One will be a biotech plant for vaccine production, which will also produce insulin and other biological products.
He added that EDCL will increase in-house production to stop toll manufacturing and raise the rate of meeting government demand from 70% to 90%.