FG urged to fix pharma manufacturing bottlenecks

Stakeholders have called on the Federal Government to prioritise easing local pharmaceutical manufacturers’ challenges, including a harsh trade and regulatory environment, as it seeks to attract foreign investment into the sector.

In a telephone interview, the former president of the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria, Olumide Akintayo, stressed that an enabling business environment is crucial for the industry to thrive.

“The very first responsibility of government is to guarantee the security of the lives of people and the public. We want to see that the government creates an enabling environment for the citizens, making things conducive to running businesses, whether it’s pharma or any other sector,” Akintayo said.

His comments come after the Federal Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Dr. Jumoke Oduwole, disclosed in a press interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos that she was working with the Minister of Health, Muhammad Pate, to bring an unnamed foreign healthcare manufacturer into Nigeria as part of efforts to boost pharmaceutical manufacturing.

While acknowledging the benefits of foreign investment, Akintayo insisted that local manufacturers must not be left to struggle under burdensome tariffs and high operational costs.

“We already have a conglomerate of Indian pharmaceutical factories. I’m sure you’ve heard of Jawa Pharmaceuticals; they came up with the beta-lactam, basically an Indian company,” Jawa continued. “But the principle is simple: whether foreign or indigenous manufacturers, it does our economy a lot of good when people produce things around there.

“Of course, it’s much better if they are Nigerian manufacturers because of the prestige they bring and the potential hub for pharmaceuticals it creates.”

The pharmacist questioned the effectiveness of President Bola Tinubu’s executive order, signed in June 2024, waiving duty payments on the importation of certain pharmaceutical inputs.

His remarks: “President Tinubu signed an executive order almost one year ago, and the first question you ask yourself is, what has changed between that time and now? If nothing has changed, then what are the fundamentals? Why is it that you don’t have an improvement? Why has it not impacted drug prices?

He decried excessive tariffs, exorbitant registration rates, and high costs, which continue to stifle local pharmaceutical companies at different ports.

 “How do we run our business at the various points of entry? What is the difference between bringing in these products through the Seme point or the point of entry in Ghana? We have to look at all of these variables. And then you see why we have problems.

“Are we doing enough to encourage local production of excipients? One of the most common excipients in the pharma industry is pharmaceutical-grade starch. We are reputed to be the highest producer of yams, yet we import pharmaceutical-grade starch, but we are not producing it even when we produce the highest volume of cassava starch.

He is also worried that there has not been much progress in checking the overreach of security forces.

“Find out what the experience of exporters is like,” the pharmacist submitted. “You cannot take a container that you are exporting yam, wheat, or anything through the port in Apapa without policemen assigned to police posts collecting money in several millions of naira depending on the value of what you are trying to ship. We need to go back to the basics.”

Akintayo criticised regulatory agencies for prioritising internally generated revenue over public health, querying, “Why are regulatory agencies in the pharma sector among the top three earners of money for the government? So, you prioritise IGR over the health of the people? Drug prices are exorbitant, yet government agencies introduce new policies that force pharma companies to change product labels, leading to another round of costly investment.

Similarly, the President of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Gabriel Idahosa, in a telephone interview, called for the urgent implementation of the pharmaceutical inputs duty-free waiver, attributing the delay to poor coordination among government agencies.

“The delay in the implementation of the pharmaceutical inputs duty-free waiver is a matter of government agencies not coordinating well among themselves. The implementation of the waiver is something that flows from the Central Bank to the commercial banks that fund these transactions. The government is meant to coordinate,” Idahosa stated.

He also clarified misconceptions about the departure of pharmaceutical multinationals from Nigeria.

“Even before the pharmaceutical multinationals left, Nigeria was not producing up to 20 to 30 per cent of all the medicine needed as a country. When they left, they did not carry their factories with them. Those factories are still here in Lagos and every other place they were operating,” he explained.

Idahosa affirmed that the Minister of FMITI, Oduwole, in her statement in Davos, emphasised the government’s medical industrialisation policy, which he interpreted as taking leadership to make Nigeria a hub for medical production, including vaccines.

“Nigeria must embark on a huge programme of medical industrialisation to meet our medical needs and that of our neighbours who cannot afford high-end medical industries,” he added.

The stakeholders maintained that while foreign investment is welcome, addressing local industry challenges remains the key to sustaining the local pharmaceutical sector.