The purchase price of PCR tests was less than half a dollar, and in Republika Srpska they paid 30 to 80 convertible marks ($ 17.7 to 47.2) more, Deutsche Welle reported, citing distributor data.
Citizens paid from 105 to 150 BAM for commercial testing, and the Institute for Public Health of RS had a monopoly for all procurements, whose director Branislav Zeljković is in custody due to embezzlement with public procurements during the pandemic.
According to DW, the distributors claim that the institute’s tenders were rigged. From the beginning of the pandemic until today, ie in the last 18 months, 348 thousand PCR tests have entered the Institute of Public Health of the Republic of Srpska, through the purchase of tests and through donations., Federalna writes.
Most of it came through UNDP donations, which delivered 204,900 tests to the RS Institute of Public Health from April 2020 to August this year, instead of 179,000 as claimed by the Institute, so about 25,000 UNDP tests are missing.
The Institute told DW that the tests were procured through the companies Ako Med, Shimadzu, Spektrolab, Ceemed, Lab Unica, Erkona, Biomedica, and at the invitation of journalists, only two companies responded, denying their participation in the procurement.
From those two companies, whose names are not stated, they stated that the jobs were given to companies for which the tender conditions were set in advance. The text further states that the price of commercial PCR testing at the beginning of the pandemic was 200 marks, and that the price at which the Institute procured the tests at that time was around 30 marks.
The price of PCR testing in Republika Srpska was reduced to 140 marks at the end of last year, and currently amounts to 100 BAM.
“At the moment, the price of the tests delivered by the supplier is 4.5 marks. This means that this price includes customs and transport and a special storage regime,” the text reads.
