Its sabotage to import drugs, Ruto tells Kemsa
President William Ruto has said that the Kenya Medical Supplies Authority should consider using locally-made pharmaceutical products. https://rb.gy/17j8q
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00:00 The products they are producing in Kenya and selling to the Kenyan market,
00:04 the products they are producing from here and selling elsewhere,
00:09 the jobs they are creating for us in Kenya,
00:13 the manufacturing opportunity that they have made possible in Kenya,
00:19 and the collaboration between private sector players in Bangladesh
00:25 and private sector players in Kenya.
00:29 That is the kind of partnership that we are fashioning,
00:34 and that is the kind of partnership that as Government of Kenya we are going to support,
00:39 to make sure that we leverage on the market that we have,
00:45 on the capabilities that we have,
00:47 on the opportunities that exist in Kenya,
00:51 and in fact the opportunities that exist in our region,
00:55 to enable more companies to invest in different sectors of our economy,
01:04 and more particularly in this sector around pharmaceutical manufacture.
01:11 We import at the moment 70% of all our pharmaceutical commodities and products.
01:18 It's been the case for a while,
01:22 and we need to leverage on the opportunity that we have for pharmaceutical products
01:32 to manufacture locally, create value locally, create jobs in Kenya.
01:39 And my instructions to the whole, to the Ministry and the sector,
01:44 is that in the next two years we should move our production
01:49 of local pharmaceutical products from 30% to 50%,
01:54 and in the next five years we should be able to be self-reliant on pharmaceutical products.
02:03 Why I say so is because manufacturing locally speaks to the opportunity that we have locally.
02:13 The space of pharmaceutical is guaranteed.
02:21 We will always import pharmaceutical products.
02:25 We've done so for long.
02:27 You don't need a business case to invest in the pharmaceutical space in Kenya.
02:33 That case has already been made over the years.
02:38 And therefore, the connection between the private sector in Kenya and the private sector elsewhere
02:45 is what we want to facilitate as the Government of Kenya,
02:48 and we are working on many interventions,
02:51 including making sure that our own procuring entities
02:59 prioritise Kenyan-manufactured pharmaceutical products.
03:06 I am acutely aware, and I've had a conversation with the management of Chemsa,
03:11 that they cannot continue to import products that are being manufactured locally.
03:19 It is sabotage to our local manufacturing industry.
03:26 And it actually is sabotage to our own development
03:31 and to creating jobs for the many young people out there who are looking for opportunity to work.
03:38 [BLANK_AUDIO]