🔻 Head of the Food and Drug Organization: reducing the quota of the preferred currency increased the price of drugs

🔻 Head of the Food and Drug Organization: reducing the quota of the preferred currency increased the price of drugs

The head of the Food and Drug Organization says that the price jump is due to the decrease in the share of the preferred currency for importing pharmaceutical items.

Mehdi Pirslahi said: "Last year, about 3.5 billion dollars of preferential currency was allocated to the field of medicine and equipment, but this year this figure was reduced to 3 billion dollars in the budget approved by the government and parliament."

"Therefore, 500 million dollars were deducted from the preferred currency of this region at the beginning of the year."

With this cap reduced, some of these drugs must be supplied in a non-preferred currency.

Mr. Pirslahi also said: "Last year we received about 1.5 billion dollars in non-preferred currency at a rate of about 60 to 70 thousand tomans, but this rate has now reached about 170 thousand tomans."

Mohammadreza Zaparkandi, the Minister of Health, recently confirmed the high price of the drugs and said that transportation problems are one of the reasons for this increase. According to him, "the raw materials that were previously imported by ship, now have to be transported by plane, and this problem has increased the costs." According to official sources in Iran, during the war, 16 pharmaceutical factories were the target of a ground attack.

The naval blockade of Iran by the United States has made it difficult and slow to import goods to Iran, including medicine.