Agostini Group’s acquisition of two companies – Oscar Francois Ltd and Intersol Ltd has raised several concerns for the Pharmacy Board of TT, mainly the possible monopoly that this merger could lead too.
In light of this the Board has now reached out to the TT Fair Trade Commission (TTFTC) to discuss the concerns of pharmacists.
The board’s president Andrew Rahaman revealed that they are now waiting on feedback from the commission.
Agostini’s acquisition of the two pharmaceutical firms, was made through its subsidiary Smith Robertson and Co Ltd. The three companies are distributors for vaccine manufacturers AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Johnson and Johnson. The Ministry of Trade and Industry, noting the concerns, assured the provision of vaccines would be a government to government at this time.
However, Agostini’s has said it looked forward to when the vaccines become commercially available.
TTFTC said it was aware of the concerns “assures the public that it continues to monitor the local pharmaceutical industry in order to detect and treat with anti-competitive activities such as unfair selling prices, predatory pricing, discriminatory behaviour and abusive increase of prices of essential pharmaceutical products.”
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