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Mozambique: Businessmen complain about fraudulent charges in Importation of medicines
12:58 CAT | 25 Feb 2025
File photo: Noticias
Mozambican businesspeople are expressing concern at the practises of a company, QUNTROL, which allegedly charges fees to test the quality of medicines imported from India without, however, having laboratories or the structure to do so.
In addition, the company allegedly duplicates the role of the Mozambique Medicines Regulatory Authority (ANARME), which is generating concern in this sector, as it is considered to affect foreign trade.
The complaint was filed last week by Agostinho Vuma, president of the Confederation of Economic Associations, during the eighteenth edition of the Economic Briefing, a quarterly private sector event.
The situation, Vuma explained, arose in 2017, when ANARME issued a circular informing importers about the existence of a company that would test the quality of medicines imported from India.
“However, the manufacturers found that it was not a laboratory, but an institution created for that purpose and without any structure for that work. In short, we do not know for sure what the purpose of creating this company was, other than to extort, since it does not have laboratories and currently performs the same function as ANARME,” Vuma complained.
Contrary to the purposes of its creation, he said that currently QUNTROL does not carry out qualitative testing, but only controls packaging and presentation, thereby facilitating the entry of low-quality products into Mozambique, when its objective was, precisely, to test the quality of medicines.
The CTA therefore concludes that the problems faced since the company was created are related to impasses in the inspection of products with different terminologies, but which refer to the same good.
The president of CTA explained that a fee is charged to the exporter to carry out the inspection, which he in turn demands from the importer. However, this value is not added to the price list, which certainly causes a drop in the final price calculation.
“After many discussions between AIPROMEM (Mozambique Association of Importers and Producers of Medicines) and the then DNF, questioning the criteria that MISAU/DNF used to select the laboratory or company that would provide the quality testing services, and without a convincing answer, they said that QUNTROL was a representative of DNF in India, and later issued a decree on the matter,” Vuma concluded.
Source: Noticias
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