Improved ways and means to allocate currency for the pharma sector were discussed at a meeting attended by the governor of the Central Bank of Iran and the health minister.Mohammadreza Farzin, the CBI chief, referred to the provision of forex for pharmaceutical companies and said,  “Given the importance of timely access to medicine and address the people's needs, banks are required to follow rules to ease the pharma and health companies’ access to foreign currency,” the news agency IBENA quoted him as saying.Farzin issued instructions to expedite and improve forex allocation for medicine including petty cash for pharma companies to the tune of €100 million.The Minister of Health Bahram Einollahi appreciated the CBI support as well as the provision of facilities and credit to the health and pharmaceutical sectors and called for curbing the bureaucratic process.A memorandum of understanding has been signed to expedite and facilitate foreign exchange and credit services.During the meeting, representatives of pharmaceutical manufacturers, raw material suppliers medicine importers expressed concern about issues related to their businesses.The CBI boss discussed solutions to address the problems and issued instructions to the forex and credit departments of the central bank.He noted that in May the regulator made available subsidized forex ($1=285,000 rials) worth $3.5 billion for medicine import in the current Iranian year (started March 21).“Considering the need for medical equipment and medicine,  $3.5 billion has been allocated for importing medicine, raw material and medical equipment this year.”The senior banker noted that loans worth 300 trillion rials will be given to pharma companies in the current fiscal to help them meet needs for working capital and ease medicine and raw material import.  (ICE TEHERAN)

Fonte notizia: Financial Tribune