Beximco Pharmaceuticals, a Bangladeshi pharmaceutical company, is set to sell coronavirus vaccine in domestic market. The company will buy 3 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine from the Serum Institute of India. They have to buy the vaccine for about 8 dollars per dose.

Beximco’s Chief Operating Officer (COO) Rabbur Reza said this in an interview with Reuters.

He said, “Beximco had earlier signed an agreement with Serum to supply 5 million doses of vaccine per month to the Bangladesh government at a cost of about 4 dollars. The government-subsidised vaccine will be provided in the first six months of this year.”

Rabbur Reza told Reuters over telephone, “Beximco will start selling the vaccine from next month. In the retail market, it will cost 1,125 rupees (13.27 dollars). At present, they have an agreement to supply 1 million doses of vaccine. It can be increased up to 20 lakh doses.”

He further said, “Beximco had initially discussed the import of vaccines from India’s Biological E and Bharat Biotech in addition to Serum. The Bangladeshi company is the ‘exclusive distributor’ of the vaccine produced by the Serum Institute.”

Rabbur Reza said, “So far our partner is Serum and we will continue to work with them, that is our goal. If the government wants more vaccines and wants to collect vaccines from organizations other than AstraZeneca, we will also discuss the vaccines that Serum is working on.”

Serum is charging Indian government Tk 2.73 for per dose of vaccine. However, the price of each dose in Bangladesh is about 4 dollars which is almost 1.5 percent higher.