Dareen Mansour wrote on mtv:
The economic and financial crisis that Lebanon is going through casts a shadow over the pharmaceutical sector, amid the continuous and insane rise in the exchange rate of the dollar against the pound on the black market. Consequently, the Lebanese suffer from a daily high price of unsubsidized medicines. Will the sector, like other sectors, turn towards dollarization?
The head of the Drug Importers Syndicate, Karim Jabara, indicates that drugs can be divided into two parts: The first section is subsidized drugs, which are drugs for incurable diseases, so that about 80 to 90 percent of the subsidies available monthly from the Central Bank belong to them. And he confirms that these medicines are not offered for dollarization because they are still calculated at the exchange rate of 1,500 pounds, which is much less than the actual exchange rate for the dollar.
And Jabara continued, in an interview with MTV: “As for the second category of medicines, they are unsubsidized medicines, whose price is actually determined by the Ministry of Health according to a specific mechanism, and they are almost dollarized because their price is set in dollars, and then this dollar is converted into Lebanese pounds at the daily exchange rate.”
He explains, “The ministry issues a daily index or exchange rate for unsubsidized medicines, as is the case for fuel. This price is approved on the ministry’s website.” He added, “These drugs are dollarized and do not change anything for the Lebanese patient, because they are already dollarized.”
With regard to the customs dollar, he said, “The Council of Ministers issued a decision to cancel customs duties on medicines, and the decision will become effective after two or three days, and therefore raising the customs dollar does not affect the price of medicines.”
