Pascal Brière is the President of Biogaran, new owners of Swiss Pharma Limited. In this interview with Abiola Odutola, he rekindles hope, saying the recession period may not last for too long. He also outlines the challenges faced by manufacturers in the country and tries to proffer solutions to them. Excerpts:
The Nigerian economy is presently in recession and it is a time several investors are scared of injecting funds into it. What motivated you to invest here?
The economy at the moment is very difficult and tough. Nigeria is facing the craziest recession that started more than two years ago, when the oil prices fell and dollar became scarce. But we think it is a very temporary situation and that the cycle will end and Nigeria will recover very likely next year and perhaps, depending on economic policies the government is putting in place. Already, they have done something on the foreign exchange market in order to ease access to the dollar, which is a very good sign. And we have been told that the Nigerian people are very energetic and Nigeria may recover very quickly.
Why are you here?
Our company is a private company and the shareholders of our group are its foundation. So of course, they need to have return on investment. We are here to have reasonable profit and take initiatives in Nigeria where others think it is too risky to invest in. Our shareholding structure as a foundation enables us to have a long-lasting strategy here and to consider what the others consider risky as a huge opportunity. We hope we would be supported by the officials of the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Finance and Central Bank of Nigeria, among others, to help us develop. But we see Nigeria as a true opportunity.
Lack of access to raw materials has been a bane to the operations of pharmaceutical companies in Nigeria. How do you intend to tackle the challenge?
Having a factory here is an asset. The two assets of the company are the brand, Swipha, which is associated with European quality; and the production plant, which is the first company to be ISO 9001 certified and World Health Organisation approved. We are using the factory as much as we can, to do the local content. While we were not yet owners of Swipha, we managed to import at least, half a million active ingredients here to get inventory on those shelves. We spent at least $500,000 on active ingredients and we are preparing a new order of goods to be imported. We had access to dollars at the market conditions, which are very tough. I hope that the government would continue to put money in the system, as it has been doing for some weeks now; to make it easy for companies like us to have access to dollars for the importation of active ingredients at the CBN rate.
If the policy is reversed, how do you sustain your supply chain?
We would have to increase capital in any hope. We would import capital and raise capital through importation. We need to increase capital. That is what we would do. We hope the banks will help us because the capital should be used to restore the company to make it very dynamic and I hope the Central Bank would be a real business partner in enabling us first to have access to dollars and second, to enable us use our money to develop the company and commence production in Nigeria.
Apart from access to foreign exchange, which other areas of policy direction would you like the government to act on in enabling you and other investors do businesses with ease in the country?
Access to finance and to forex is very important. I think there is some kind of efficiency in registering new products but we have not experienced it. So we really expect that market access with NAFDAC would not be difficult and we would not face many hurdles when we bring those quality medicines to them to have clearance. What is important is to have some kind of regulations on what is imported without any local approval; what is counterfeit and what is made by Nigerian pharmaceutical industry because we are facing very different forms of competition, which is not normal. We do not expect this to cease overnight but am sure that the government has been tackling that for years. If there is access to active ingredients, issues of under-utilisation of local manufacturing production facilities will be addressed.
Considering the challenges with Common External Tariff implementation, how do you hope to deal with competition from neighbouring countries?
You are right, but I think Swipha’s name is a strong advantage and we conducted a survey here with patients, physicians and pharmacists to check the reputation of Swipha and the survey was incredibly positive. Swipha’s name is associated with quality, reliability and confidence. This is a competitive advantage compared to the other companies operating in the region and that may balance the advantage they have in economy and access to currency. Second is that I think we have competitive manufacturing here, so all the issue is to have access to dollars and for sure, once we have access, we have competitive production here, that enables us to compete efficiently in the market.
How do you hope to address issues of job losses arising from your acquisition of Swipha?
We are not financial people and we are not here to cut off jobs to make profit. It is not the way we act. We want to develop the company, so we need to keep the people. We want to resume sales first. I used to say there is no problem that sales cannot solve, really, in the economy. So we want to resume sales; we are not going to cut jobs if people are doing their jobs properly. We are here to develop the company and we have a long-lasting strategic view that is very important.
I think there is some kind of efficiency in registering new products but we have not experienced it. So we are really expect that market access with NAFDAC would not be difficult and we would not face many hurdles when we bring those quality medicines to them to have clearance
In terms of investments, how much are you bringing into the economy?
It is confidential metrics and I will not disclose that. We have already invested several millions of Euros. I cannot give an estimate but we are entrepreneurial people and we are here to develop the company. If there is any need to invest in the factory, we would do it. Today, the challenge the people of Swipha are facing is to gather inventories. Then we resume sales and invest in new products, develop the local projection and continue to invest.
