The Agency of Material Reserves under the Ministry of Internal Affairs will be authorized to apply a reduced price and sell these “material assets”. The financial resources received will be used to renew and replenish mobilization reserves.
The annex to the government’s decision says that medical three-layer masks were registered in the state reserve at the price of 1.01776 lei. The reduced price will amount to 0.2 lei.
The justification for this decision states that the Material Reserves Agency under the Interior Ministry purchased 50 thousand medical masks in 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The price of the masks (1.01 lei) at that time was determined by the market situation, when individual protective masks were demanded by both medical institutions and the population. However, 50 thousand medical masks will expire in August 2025, therefore, it is necessary to renew the stock.
Since the masks were more expensive than the current market offers, the Joint Commission considered setting reduced prices. Therefore, in June 2024, this Commission determined the selling price at the level of the reference price, i.e. 1.01 lei per unit.
Between June 2024 and February 2025. The MIA sent eight requests to public health institutions with a proposal for the purchase of medical masks. However, given that their price was quite high compared to the market price, at a time of low demand for masks, it was not feasible to sell them to health facilities. Therefore, the government had to authorize a price reduction below the discounted price to “avoid loss or spoilage of this quantity of goods.”
Now let’s compare the price of medical masks purchased from the state reserve during the pandemic – 1.02 lei and the selling prices in pharmacies for the same masks, which were up to 20 lei per piece. That is, during the pandemic this vital commodity was sold to the population almost 20 times more expensive than the purchase price. And the state did not interfere in any way. Officials said that pharmacies are private business, which they cannot influence, because we have market relations.
