As it goes, Insabi will extend the shortage until 2024

Among the many entanglements that Insabi and UNOPS are involved in, is that of the debt that they have been accumulating since they began to operate allegedly jointly; It is a multimillion-dollar debt with drug suppliers which now becomes an obstacle for the purchase that Insabi seeks to make for the 2023 and 2024 supply.

And it is that due to the slowness in collection many of the suppliers are stuck without liquidity to acquire raw material, so they are not in a position to participate in the next purchase that Insabi is already organizing.

Representatives of the pharmaceutical sector say that the debt of Insabi and UNOPS with the industry in a first approximation is estimated at about 9,000 million pesos; this, covering a significant proportion of the purchases of 2020, almost everything acquired in 2021, and in some cases there are companies to which the Government owes since 2019.

We know that the associations that make up the pharmaceutical sector -Canifarma, AMIIF, Amelaf and Anafam- have already begun to recount what is owed to their partners in each case in order to have a clearer idea of ​​the amount. UNOPS affirms that it is responsible for only 28% of the expenditure for the purchase of medicines and that 96% of its payments to suppliers are on time, but this does not coincide with what the companies have said. What is certain is that UNOPS will not be able to finalize its work in Mexico until the last weight of the federal budget spent has been clarified.

And it turns out that companies are stuck in clarifications with both organizations, because both Insabi and UNOPS are imposing fines and sanctions on practically all suppliers for non-compliance or lack of timely delivery. And it is not to defend pharmacists, but we well remember when the huge delivery bottleneck in 2021 due to the armed wrongdoing of the first Insabi/UNOPS purchase. If there were no timely deliveries at the time, it was because the executors of the purchases initially forgot the “small detail” of the distribution, the 4T having pushed aside the specialized distributors. Throughout 2021, derived from the disorder, a paralysis was generated due to the fact that medical institutions rejected product deliveries. IMSS, Sedena, Semar, Pemex, CCINSHAE and others gave countless reasons: that they had not asked for it, that they had nowhere to put it, that they did not have a cold chain, that they had already bought it elsewhere, etc.

The way things are going, Insabi is guaranteeing shortages for the remainder of the six-year term; In principle, it is highly doubtful that he will achieve that purchase for two years. Alejandro Calderón Alipi’s team at Insabi expects to make a profit from the larger volumes they plan to buy, also planning to impose fixed prices, but given the growing inflation, let’s see who dares to quote a price for the next two years.

It is said that they are considering including price revisions for inflation in the bases of the call, which is also considered in the Acquisitions Law; This will be known now that they take out the call. But among the suppliers there is no confidence that they will achieve it: “if they do not resolve the revision of a common and current delivery for payment, how will they go about recognizing the inflation in each of the prices?”

The publication of the call is expected for October 31, the clarification meeting would be on November 16, the presentation of proposals on November 23, the evaluation of offers in the week of November 24 to 30 and the ruling would be published December 6th. According to these dates, the process would be very agile, but what is too forced is the date of the first deliveries calculated for January, something out of reality.

In fact, Insabi’s credibility is so low among the medical institutions themselves, that – out there they tell us – they are preventing themselves with strategic purchases on their part to cover themselves until next March.

UNOPS, excessive cost and few results

Perhaps the United Nations officials from The Hague in the Netherlands are unable to measure the annoyance caused in Mexico by the fact that they have cheered and applauded themselves by saying that the purchase of medicines from their organization UNOPS was the best in the world. . Hopefully someone has informed them that his pronouncement generated great disagreement within Mexico among many institutions of civil society such as patient organizations that have suffered from the shortage of therapies that has already accumulated 4 years since the current six-year term began, and that the great The expectation generated by the arrival of UNOPS in 2020 ended in enormous disappointment because it did not help solve it. In addition, it would be important for them to explain that they generated savings of 10,000 million pesos; What are they based on and how did they reach that figure if they barely took care of 28% of the purchases. For now, it is clear that the 2,700 million pesos that UNOPS received from the Mexican Treasury for 4 years of work, which in the end will only be effective for two years, was an excessive payment because the Government terminated their contract.

Starts III Medical Expo of Devices

The medical equipment and device industry in Mexico will be gathered in the III edition of Medical-Expo that will take place from October 25 to 27 at the WTC in Mexico City. Its organizer Carlos Salazar Gaytán, when presenting the event, spoke of the solid growth of this strategic sector in Mexico that in 2021 generated a production value of some 15,800 million dollars, but of which only 3,800 million are for national consumption, that is to say barely a fifth. A clear example that it is necessary to further promote the internal market of the enormous and growing range of medical devices manufactured in Mexican territory.