Medicine prices increasing

It revealed that the price increase would go into effect by the end of this month as pharmacies throughout the country were saying prices have been increasing on a weekly basis.

The Company said it was trying to avoid having to adjust prices too often saying they were going into a new environment where price increases may happen more often.

Chief Executive Officer of SuperPharm, Glen Maharaj, said he has been seeing quite a number of suppliers making price adjustments because of the foreign exchange devaluation. “We have not received any specific price adjustment, but we have seen some suppliers doing so already.

A lot of suppliers are actually making price adjustments because at TT$6.30 to TT$6.6 (US$1), that is probably already a six per cent in devaluation of the currency. “Generally, when our suppliers have passed on price increases, we tend to look at it and then, depending on what it is, we will have no choice to pass it on to consumers.

We may not necessarily pass on 100 percent, but we look at each one of them and at the end of the day, generally when those kinds of adjustments are made, we have to pass it on to the consumer,” Maharaj said Owner of A Sinanan Drug Store, Anthony Sinanan said if they had to import and the price went up because of the price of the US$, their price on drugs would obviously go up.

“If we pay more for it, our mark up will not change, it will be the same, but the price will raise,” Sinanan said.