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The New York Times: Hungary pays a lot for the Chinese vaccines
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Based on the contracts made public by the Hungarian government on Thursday, Hungary agreed to pay about USD 36 per one dose of the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine. That makes the state-owned company’s product currently the world’s most expensive.
According to nytimes.com, Hungary will buy five million doses of the vaccine for a price of EUR 30 per one dose. The relevant contracts were uploaded on the Facebook page of Gergely Gulyás, Minister of the Prime Minister’s Office. “The contract is between the Hungarian government and a third-party vendor, and
that price far surpasses what the European Union has agreed to pay for vaccines from Western manufacturers,”
says the American daily.
That is because, based on an EU document cited by Reuters, the European Union pays EUR 15.50 for a Pfizer dose and USD 2.15 for an AstraZeneca vaccine, according to Belgium’s budget secretary.
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Interestingly, the Russian Sputnik-V vaccine costs only USD 9.95 per dose.
“The company from which Hungary is buying the [Chinese] vaccine underwent a change in ownership two months before the transaction and was awarded the contract after the government exempted it from having to take part in an open public procurement process,” Miklós Ligeti, legal director for Transparency International Hungary, an anticorruption group working in the country, told The New York Times.
The New York Times says that
such arrangements raise red flags for anticorruption watchdogs,