ZAMMSA K600m ’local’ supply hoax exposed – Only about 10 out of 24 companies awarded are citizen owned
The Zambia Medicines and Medical Supplies Agency – ZAMMSA attempts to hoodwink the public that local citizens were awarded K600 million worth of contracts to supply medicine to government has been exposed after sources confirmed that more than half of the companies awarded as local companies are actually foreign owned but locally registered.
Sources whose names have been withheld told the Zambian Business Times – ZBT that only about 10 out of the 24 companies awarded the contracts to supply under a mop up exercise were citizen owned, with others being mere fronts. Meaning that the use of ‘locals’ is misleading to the general public.
The impeccable sources told ZBT that if you look at the list, the bigger size in value contracts were given to foreign companies registered in Zambia but owned by foreign nationals. It’s therefore wrong for ZAMMSA to pretend and sell the list as local citizens when they are very much aware that most of those funds will be taken out of the country, and other genuine local citizens have been denied the opportunity due to selfish officers in government.
“I can tell you that Citizen owned companies share should be less than 30% of that K600 million, and the citizen owned companies included may have just been used to color and paint a local suppliers picture”, stated the source. ZBT has since received the list from ZAMMSA and confirmed with experts that indeed most of the companies are not local citizen owned companies.
ZAMMSA and ZAMRA have been sited as institutions that are contributing heavily to forex outflows out of Zambia as they seem to resist supporting local players to build capacity and retain the profits in Zambia. Locally owned and developed pharma industry will deliver local manufacturing and bring down thr medicines import bill.
The source further told ZBT that some corrupt politicians are also to blame for this situation. They are responsible for the amendment of the public procurement act in 2022 which removed the prioritization of citizen owned companies with the new definition of “local” companies being diluted to include foreign owned companies registered in Zambia.
ZAMMSA has been challenged to fully publish the final list in accordance with the current procurement act with the accompanying values so that members of the public can see this for themselves.
Photo below for illustration purposes only
