B.Braun will move to Indonesia cause of no open tender.

GEORGE TOWN: A multi-national company may move part of its operations aboard because it claims it is unable to “compete effectively”.
B. Braun corporate controlling, finance and information technology vice-president Dieter Gemmer said the company was considering moving part of its operations, specifically pharmaceuticals, from Penang to Indonesia because it does not wish to go through “medical middlemen” to sell its products.
“Since 1972, we have invested a total of RM1bil here with a workforce of 4,700.
“All we want is to be allowed to participate in open tenders instead of having to sell our products through a third party,” he said, adding that the company would decide by December on whether or not to move.
“At the moment, we have about 500 employees working in our pharmaceutical plant,” he said at the company’s “I am a Star” family day carnival in Bayan Lepas yesterday.
Operations vice-president Dr Juergen Scholeosser said the
company was still committed to a future in Penang through its medical products manufacturing facilities.
“We will invest RM100mil for the construction of new buildings next year. We also expect to spend between RM800mil and RM1bil in the next five years,” he said.
Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng, who was at the function, claimed that Malaysia was losing about RM10.45bil annually because of “middlemen” in the medical supplies industry.
Hospitals are paying up to 30% more for supplies because multinational medical companies have to go through “approved companies” to sell their products, he said.
The ‘‘approved companies’’ are described as distributors, who sell the products to end-users – medical practitioners from hospitals to clinics and health-conscious consumers, Lim added.
“The medical supplies industry is worth between US$8bil (RM27.8bil) and US$10bil and we are wasting big bucks on these middlemen. (Losing) US$3bil is akin to a mini Port Klang Free Zone – this amount is nearly seven times the state’s annual budget,” he said.
He said it would be much cheaper if hospitals were allowed to buy healthcare supplies direct from manufacturers.
“I will be writing to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak and the Health Ministry to urge for open tenders for the sale of medical supplies,” he said.

From the desk of Penang CM