The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) guaranteed that the administration didn’t settle on a 100 percent advance installment framework and is yet to pay the wholesalers, in this way, it won’t lose any cash on the arrangement.
The matter of the overrated units became visible when pharmaceutical organizations who had gone into a concurrence with Matrix Labs, the shipper of the packs, to disseminate the groups in India finished the last mentioned.
While the request in court was about Matrix declining to discharge testing packs without a development installment, procedures uncovered that Matrix was purchasing the testing units at a pace of Rs 245. Still, then the pharmaceutical organizations – Real Metabolics and Aark Pharmaceuticals – sold them at a speed of Rs 600 for each piece to ICMR.
Another pharma organization – Shan Biotech – likewise offered these packs to the Tamil Nadu government at a similar rate.
Understanding that the pharma organizations were attempting to make ‘huge’ benefits on the testing units, the Delhi High Court advised the organizations to diminish the rate to Rs 400 for every pack. Be that as it may, the request won’t be material to their deals to ICMR and Tamil Nadu government.
Claims of corruption
After the Delhi HC procedures uncovered that the Indian government was being sold overrated units, Congress asserted membership.
Congress representative Manish Tewari on Monday requested that the administration should make open subtleties of all buys made over the most recent one month to battle Covid-19, charging that colossal profiteering was being made during this season of emergency.
Tewari said the administration ought to guarantee that massive profiteering in the acquisition of hardware for battling Covid-19 be halted right away.
“We might want to request from the Health Ministry and the administration to make open all obtainments made concerning gear to battle COVID-19 for testing, PPEs, and ventilators. Every one of those exchanges must be straightforwardly set in open space,” he said.
Why did India not buy kits directly from manufacturers? ICMR clarifies
In a statement, ICMR explained why it decided to purchase the rapid antibody testing kits via distributors and not directly from the manufacturers.
The ICMR said that while its first attempt to procure these kits did not elicit any response from the suppliers, the second attempt got adequate responses. Of these, taking sensitivity and specificity in mind, kits of two companies – Wondfo Biotech and Livzon Diagnostic – were identified for procurement as they both had international certifications.
“For Wondfo, the evaluation committee got four bids, and the corresponding quotes received were Rs 1,204, Rs 1,200, Rs 844 and Rs 600. Accordingly, the bid-offer of Rs 600 was considered as L-1,” the statement said.
ICMR also tried to procure the kits directly from the Wondfo company in China. However, the quotation received from direct procurement had issues such as it was FOB (Free on Board) which means there was no commitment to logistics by the supplier, it said,
The supplier was also asking for 100 percent direct advance without any guarantees. ICMR said that the rates were communicated in US dollars without any clause for accounting for fluctuations in prices.
Therefore, the research body chose Wondfo’s exclusive distributor for India Matrix labs for the kit. The Matrix labs quoted an all-inclusive price for FOB (logistics) without any clause for advance.
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