 The Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry has warned that the myriad of challenges caused by Western insecurity and crisis in the energy sector may subdue the gross domestic product growth projections for Nigeria in 2022. The president of the LCCI, Dr. Michael Olawale-Kol, announced that the Petroleum Industry Act now seems to be in a state of limbo. He says the Western security challenges in many parts of the country are another serious threat to the agricultural and manufacturing value chain which is capable of reducing production and contracting these sectors. Also, how much progress can a health provider make in the society if it is constantly confronted with the challenge of a broken supply chain, chaotic distribution channels, epileptic delivery of quality medicines and pharmaceutical supplies? Not much. For these is the reality that many health providers in sub-Saharan Africa have to deal with as they work towards an efficient health care delivery system. We'll be looking at fixing the supply chain challenge in pharmaceuticals on the show today. Welcome to Business Insight and Plus TV Africa, I am Justin Al-Qadouni. Well first off, let's take you through some of the biggest economic stories in Nigeria that trended this week. Here are the highlights. No fewer than 2,256 depositors have lodged complaint against their banks with the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria. It's on transactions totaling $368.9 billion and $428.7 and that is $177.05 billion on the account. The institute, however, said it had been able to resolve 2,206 of the reported cases. It also said that the total amount awarded on the cases were $30.65 billion and $19.48 million since inception of the tribunal. The price of liquefied petroleum gas LPG, otherwise known as cooking gas, has risen by 25.7% in the last three weeks as 12.5 kg now sells at $8,800 from $7,000. This means revealed that 1 kg rose by 11% to 1,000 naira from 900 naira, 3 kg rose by 10% to 2,200 from 2,000 naira, 6 kg rose by 15.8% to 4,400 naira from 3,800 naira, while 12.5 kg rose by 25.7% to 8,800 naira from 7,000 naira. Meanwhile, the liquefied petroleum gas retailers Branch of Newpink had called on the government to come up with a clear policy direction for the development of LPG in the country to forestall the consistent rise in the price of the products. The Nigeria Custom Service, NCS, has commenced the implementation of the new version of the economic community of West African states echoes Common External Tariff, CET 2022-2026 According to the NCS, the migration from the old CET 2017-2021 to the new version, which is in line with the World Customs Organization WCO, takes immediate effect. The customs spokesman Timi Bomodi said the new rate applied to both new and used vehicles imported into the country. New and used vehicles are subjected to National Automotive Council, NAC, level of 20-15% respectively. The service also confirmed the reduction of import duty on imported vehicles from 35-20%. The Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry has predicted that Nigeria's total debt stock was expected to heat 45.86 trillion naira by December 2022. According to the president of the LCCI, who spoke at the press briefing on the state of the nation, the country's debt stock was expected to increase following the federal government's plan to borrow an additional 1.6 trillion naira, while the 2022 debt target for domestic borrowing was paid the 2.57 trillion naira. Here are the major highlights. The government needs to look for ways to resolve the lingering fuel supply crisis by increasing in the meanwhile importation to meet growing demand, which is putting pressure on diesel and fuel prices. It has also become imperative now that Nigeria needs to have reserves for this capital for critical commodities like fuel, which can be accessed to meet sudden crashes in supply like we now found ourselves. Number two, we have always advocated for the removal of wealth subsidies and that such rescued funds be devoted to subsidize the production of goods and services in the face of the rising costs of manufacturing in our country. Some people, they pay most of the cost that government should have provided in services to them. Number three, central bank of Nigeria, CBN, should embark on easing the economy while keeping a tab on controlling rising prices. Increase rates to the private sector should increase and be targeted to supply growth and export promotion sectors. Four, the growing uncertainty is driven by the war in Ukraine. We're generating insecurity crisis in our country and difficulties around the sourcing of forex for the importation of raw materials. Five, CBN needs to initiate a gradual transition to a unified exchange rate system and allow for a market reflective exchange rate. That is what we've been asking for. The currency market is still beset with persisting liquidity challenges evidenced in the wide premium between the NAFIX and the parallel market rates. The federal government plans to add 6.3 Nira new debts to the current debt stock, which will push the country's total debt stock to 45.86 trillion Nira by the end of the current year. We are likely to have a higher debt service to revenue ratio if revenue levels do not increase with great importance. Import continue to add pace exports. The trade deficit is therefore expected to widen in the full year that we are in now. And that may put more pressure on forex looking ahead to this current year. We expect could all to sustain its dominance in the Nigerian export while manufactured imports will most likely dominate the country's import bill. We anticipate sustained trade deficit in agriculture, manufactured goods and raw materials goods this year. The persisting Russia-Ukraine war has triggered a positive oil price shock with spillover effects on operating costs that are not directly to do with raw materials. Also inflation in countries that are not directly engaged with the war, Nigeria is not in any way an exception. As prices of goods and services are moving, not with the potential implication of shrinking production of goods and services. The worst security challenges in many parts of the country are another serious threat to the agricultural and manufacturing value chain in our country which is capable of inducing production and contracting these sectors. In the above conditions, if they persist, production volumes will be impacted negatively by raw materials supply chain, disruptions caused by the war in Ukraine, the rising cost of diesel, another internal security crisis. Drug losses are also very likely due to constrained production and disrupted supply chains. All of these will likely depress growth potentials in the second quarter of this year. The agricultural sector showed some evidence of impacts from heightening insecurity and lingering supply chain disruptions as it recorded regrowth of 3.58% year on year, an increase of 0.16% points when compared to quarter 4 of the year 2020 and an increase of 2.3% points from quarter 3 of last year which recorded a growth rate of 1.22%. However, the sector contributed 26.84% to overall GDP in real times in quarter 3 of last year. This is lower, of course, than the contribution that was made in quarter 4 of the year 2020 and lower to the quarter 3 of the year 2021 which was 26.95% and 29.94% respectively. The manufacturing sector recorded GDP growth of 2.28% year on year in the fourth quarter of the year 2021, higher than the figure for quarter 4 of the year preceded by 3.80 points and higher by 2.01 points for the quarter 3 of the year 2021. The growth rate of the sector on a quarter on quarter basis stood at 3.57%. In terms of rate contribution to GDP, the manufacturing sector contributed 8.46% in quarter 4 of last year, lower, of course, than 8.60% that it did in the quarter 4 of the year 2020 and lower than the 8.96% which recorded in quarter 3 of the previous year. Now a Nigerian based e-health pharmaceutical distribution startup is expanding access to quality medicines for healthcare providers and rebuilding the supply chain financing in the pharmaceutical industry. Let's welcome Dr. Chibuzu Okbara, co-founder of Drugs Talk as he joins us on the conversation of improving the pharmaceutical supply chain. Thanks for joining us, Dr. Okbara. Thank you, Justin. It's lovely to be here. All right. Let's talk about the pharmaceutical supply chain. There seems to be some bottlenecks in the sector. Can you walk us through some of them? So the Nigerian and Sub-Saharan African pharmaceutical sector and supply space is plagued by issues due to fragmentation of the supply chain. So this fragmentation has led to three key issues. The first being issues around access. The second issues around pricing. Anybody can, if you look at the price in the urban and rural areas, you see that there's a massive difference. And this is due to the broken supply chain, the products passing through multiple middle men. And the third issue which is pertinent and quite worrying is the influx of fake and substandard medication into the supply chain anywhere between 10 and 30 percent of the products in the supply chain, depending on where you get them, might be countered or substandard due to poor storage conditions. So these are some challenges that providers, patients face as they try to navigate the system. These are some of the things we tackle as a pharma tech company. All right. So how do we begin to expand access to quality medicines for healthcare providers and rebuild the supply chain financing? So what we do at Drugstop is basically leverage our pharmaceutical platform, which is a tech platform that connects manufacturers of good quality pharmaceutical products to hospitals and pharmacies. And essentially what we are doing is building a bulletproof system where manufacturers can be sure that their products can be accessed by people who need them. Your typical system, a pharmacy for instance, might see a total of 50,000 patients over the course of a year. But by leveraging our platform, this pharmacy is able to drive their operations up smoothly to go beyond this 50,000 to as much as 100, 150,000 patients, creating more access for people, doing better pricing. When they leverage our system, they're also able to take advantage of our supply chain financing solutions, which enable them to provide value for their patients cost-effectively in quality ways that benefit the patient at the last mile, immensely. All right. Let's talk about the use of technology in all of this now because, and that seems to be the future of how supplies and the mountain supply actually met. How would you see that technology is actually done in the sense of getting those who need these drugs and of course the suppliers of these drugs together, bringing them to a platform? So thank you for that great question, Justin. I mean, technology is a great enabler as we've seen post COVID, we've seen that technology has driven a lot of the movement in the space and healthcare as well as a lot of the space in industries, other similar industries. You know, I have a theory that five years from now, you're not going to have technology companies. You're just going to have all companies using technology and companies that don't to be more involved. I think even if you go to hardcore manufacturing, you hear them talking about skater systems and things like that. I'm very sure those skater systems will be interconnected in such a way that the Internet of Things will also be moving towards making production even easier. So from that perspective, I think there's no escape in technology. Now how do you make technology work for you? And this is what companies like drug stock, companies in the pharma tech space, companies in the health tech space are working towards. How do you leverage that technology to improve access? That's what we do. We provide end-to-end visibility for products going through the system. We enable companies to get their products, their good quality products out there to starve off the counterfeit products that might be in the market. We also make it easier for patients, providers, hospitals, pharmacists, doctors to be able to connect directly to these supply chains, enabling their patients to get the best quality products at the time that they need them, without any hassles, not looking for it. Every day there's a story of a patient that was looking for cancer medication and couldn't find that medication. Meanwhile, this medication is in somebody's warehouse somewhere getting expired. So using platforms like drug stock, we're able to connect these patients to where the products that they need can be brought to them at the right time, yes? Let's talk more about the future of the pharmaceuticals in Nigeria because people in the intelligence to complain of them getting this product when they need them. How do you see the Nigerian pharmaceutical industry? Where do you see them that these are in the next five years? So if you're going to look at the future, it's important to pay some mind to what has been in the past or at least what the current outlet is. Right now, the logistics space infrastructure is a bit challenged with regards to getting things to the hinterlands. You're going to have to leverage futuristic interest in solutions, drone technologies, eco-platforms, embedded financing solutions that enable people to access these products at the right cost in the ways that they can meet them at their needs, their point of needs. Take for instance, we're working on a project in Calabar where we're able to deliver drugs that would normally take nine hours or able to do it in 15 minutes due to a partnership with an innovative drone technology solution that we've leveraged in that area to be able to do that. So these are some of the things that look into the future of serving healthcare that we're going to be able to create opportunities for people to be able to get this product in addition to opening up new markets, employing people, creating new jobs in these areas as these technologies create new portals of access or new ways of doing healthcare business and providing people healthcare access that Hitterto would not have thought about it. I think the interesting thing is that in all areas of pharmaceuticals, technology is playing a huge part from developing the drugs, to distributing the drugs, to tracking, tracing, recalling the drugs across the whole lifeline of the product. You see a lot of, you know, nation, you know. So quite excited. I think this is an exciting time to be in this space, a lot of opportunities, a lot of, Nigeria has traditionally been challenged with a lot of obstacles in regards to patients accessing the product, you know, properties and power and things like that. But I think with the strength of innovations that we see on the landscape, I think the future is bright for the next few years. Okay, as we round off now, just on a quick note. Now, how do we actually sort out the issue of pricing? Most times, the issue would be getting the right drugs and getting the right quality. But another one is that of pricing. How do we begin to fix that particular challenge? Ooh, Justin, you keep giving me these very succinct questions. Pricing, pricing. Pricing is a very key thing that would enable patients, you know, access to, to, to pharmaceutical products. The issue of pricing is merit, right? Because from the, on the demand side, you have issues around affordability. You have issues around inability to pay, wages that have traditionally, and I think something like two thirds of the country or 70% or they're about to live less than the regular income standards that, that I used to benchmark countries around the world. And this is quite challenging, yet at the same time, on the other side, there's a lot of investments that need to be done on the supply side to be able to improve and increase the distribution and all that. However, having said that, I think this is the age of, of deploying finance for, for it to work for people. You know, when people hear about financial solutions, they often term think about solutions around, you know, the pay start or the flutter waves or the FinTech solutions that, that, that we see. We could have banks and all that. However, you know, there are so many financial technology revolutions that are occurring below the line, you know, embedded financing, secondary solutions, where businesses are able to take advantage of, you know, these credit opportunities, these financial flows that are made to meet the, the provider or the patient in their area of need, you know, and, and these solutions, I feel, you know, will go a long way to tackle some of these other things that need to be done, including improving insurance and things like that. All right. Thank you so much. I'm Chibu Zogba. That is as much as we can take for time sake. We must say a very big thank you for sharing all of those thoughts with us as to how we can prove the supply chain issue at the pharmaceutical sector. We do appreciate your time. Thank you, Justin. It was great to be here. It is indeed our pleasure. And that's the size of the show for today. I am Justin at Kadunye Business Insight. We'll return again next time. Bye for now.