The federal government has revealed that it has initiated plans to improve the local production of syringes, needles and other medical equipment in the country as part of efforts to fill the gap created by the foreign manufacturing companies exiting the country due to unfavorable business environment.
This was disclosed by the Minister of Trade and Investment, Doris Aniete alongside the Minister of State for Health, Tunji Alausa during a meeting with members of the Medical Device Manufacturers Association of Nigeria in Abuja.
Uzoka-Anite said the government was ready to eliminate policy bottlenecks affecting the sector while improving the capacity of local producers.
The minister also stated that a backward integration programme with enticing incentives will be explored to stop the exit of foreign manufacturing companies.
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She said, “The mandate that we’ve been given by the president is to fix every problem in Nigeria, especially problems that affect the manufacturers in all sectors of the economy.
“The government is ready to remove all impending bottlenecks in industrialisation, manufacturing or the real sector in Nigeria and we have just done that for the health instrument sector.
“We have designed a backward integration programme which incorporates policies that affect medical devices and the entire health care. We are going to launch that programme with the approval of the federal executive council soon. I am sure it will be a game-changer for the medical device industry for full capacity utilisation. There will be enticing incentives to support the industry and loaded incentives to incentivise.”
On his part, the Minister of State for Health said that, “Over the past several years, we have had a strong importation of needles and syringes to Nigeria while our local manufacturing companies suffer. The mission is to reduce the cost of pharmaceutical products in the country as well as medical supplies in the country.
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