Minister of Commerce and Trade Senator Haynesley Benn says that Government will be cracking down on the “exorbitant” markups some retailers are placing on the cost of medicine.
He said he was alarmed that the markups on drugs used to treat pain, heart disease, diabetes, sleeping difficulties and other health problems had reached over 100 per cent of the wholesale cost in some cases.
“The least markup that I’ve seen between wholesale and retail is 50 per cent. I have seen some as high as 132.6 [per cent],” he said yesterday during a Meet The Minister session hosted by the Barbados Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI) at Hilton Barbados.
Benn called on pharmaceutical retailers to “rethink and relook the markups that they put on drugs”.
“We are going to be focusing attention on that in the immediate future and we will not expose, but we will make it clear to the public what we are seeing,” he said.
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