Govt spending on Covid vaccination lacks transparency: TIB study

There remains a lack of transparency when it comes to the government's spending on Covid-19 vaccination, civil society organisation Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) has said.

"The health minister gave little information on the government spending on Covid vaccination and the information was neither detailed nor specific," TIB Executive Director Iftekharuzzaman said on Tuesday at a virtual press conference arranged to reveal its latest study on the Covid spending.

"We collected data from different authentic sources and estimated that the spending was almost half of what the government is claiming," he added.

Last month Health Minister Zahid Malaque said Tk40,000 crore had been spent on purchasing and distributing the Covid-19 vaccine, but the TIB study, titled "Governance Challenges in Tackling Covid-19 Crisis: Inclusion and Transparency", found it was approximately Tk18,000 crore – a gap of Tk22,000.

"The difference between the government and TIB estimation appears as the government prefers hiding data,"  Iftekharuzzaman said.

Based on the data collected between August 2021 to March 2022, the Bangladesh branch of the Berlin-based multinational organisation Transparency International said the government procured vaccines should cost a maximum of Tk11,254 crore in total.

However, it was Tk20,000 crore according to the health minister.

When contacted immediately after the TIB programme, Director-General of the health directorate Professor Dr ABM Khurshid Alam told The Business Standard that they were yet to receive the TIB report.

"The health ministry will clarify its side after having the report," he said, adding that the situations were different when the government procured vaccines from different countries.

At the event, TIB Research Fellow Md Julkarnayeen said the COVAX Readiness and Delivery Working Group had developed a model for vaccine management costs in low and middle-income countries, in which it showed operating costs per dose vaccine should be between Tk71.4 to Tk224.4.

"However, the health ministry in July last year said the cost per vaccine was Tk3,000," he added.

Mentioning that Bangladesh received a total of 296.4 million doses of Covid vaccines until 31 march this year, the TIB also lauded the government for its success in tackling the deadly virus in the country with mass vaccination programmes.

Costs of treatment

Covid-19 patients at private hospitals had to spend an average of Tk4,58,537 for hospital beds, medicine, ICU, oxygen and other health care facilities, finds the TIB study, while it was only Tk35,938 at government hospitals.

Nearly half of the participants in the survey said they did not receive vaccines or decided not to get vaccinated due to a lack of information and motivation.

Majority of CMSMEs fail to avail stimulus loans

The government announced 10 stimulus packages worth Tk1.6 lakh crore to help businesses, including cottage, micro, small and medium enterprises (CMSMEs), recover from Covid fallouts.

The lenders could have disbursed Tk1 lakh crore until February this year, according to the TIB.

Although CMSMEs were the worst affected by the pandemic, only 11% could have availed the loan, it said, adding that 36.4% of entrepreneurs in this sector applied for stimulus.

Some 41% of small-scale entrepreneurs were ignorant about the loan, and 29.3% could not go for that due to its complicated application process, the TIB study found.