Mexico’s President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador warned pharmaceutical companies in the country that if they did not contain their prices he would seek business elsewhere, stating that they were paying too much for medicine.
During a speech in Morelia, Obrador said that his budget would provide the public with free medicine and would bring an end to what he termed “corruption” from pharmaceutical companies, reports Reuters.
Obrador estimated that the government spent about 100 billion pesos ($5.31 billion) on medicine each year. Stating that whilst he would be fair to these companies if they continued to act as “accomplicies to corruption”, he said that the government would have no choice but to “open the bidding tenders to buy medicine anywhere in the world that they offer better prices”.
Obrador will take office Dec 1st after winning in a landslide election in July where he pledged to eradicate public waste and corruption. He further maintains that he will ensure fixed prices on basic commodities.
See more from Reuters here.