Desk Report: The Cabinet Committee on Public Procurement has approved the purchase of 60 million more doses of vaccine from China’s Sinofarm.
On Wednesday (August 11) at noon, Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal chaired a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Virtual Government Procurement. The finance minister told reporters at a briefing after the meeting.
“We have approved a proposal to purchase 60 million doses of vaccine from SynoPharm,” he said. We have calculated that 13 crore 72 lakh people of the country need to be vaccinated. It needs to buy 26 crore 75 lakh vaccines. Of this, we have 2 crore 55 lakhs. The rest has to be collected. Today we approved the purchase of 60 million doses. The rest we will do in stages.
Asked about the price of the vaccine, he said, “I will not say the price.” The price has not increased beyond the previous determination.
Asked how much the government would have to spend for the 260 million doses of the vaccine, he said, “We don’t have the price because the rest is still being negotiated.” We can tell if the price is finalized. The price has not been finalized yet, we can’t say for that.
In this context, the Additional Secretary of the Cabinet. Samsul Arefin said there is a non-disclosure agreement with China on the vaccine. That is why the price cannot be disclosed. But we hope to get 80 million synoform vaccines. It is hoped that we will get this vaccine by next November.
It is learned that in today’s cabinet meeting on procurement, the Department of Health under the Department of Health Services has approved the purchase of 60 million doses of vaccine from the Chinese company Synopharm in direct purchase method (DPM) at the single price mentioned in the contract.
Earlier, the government had procured 1.5 crore doses of Synoform vaccine from China. Of this, 6 million doses of vaccine have already arrived in the country.
Apart from this, another 16 lakh doses of Synoform vaccine have been introduced in the country under the Covax facility. Bangladesh has received 11 lakh more doses of vaccine as a gift from China.
