MoH lifts subsidies on baby milk formula, some cancer treatments

All attempts to secure milk in the Lebanese market, and prevent its smuggling and monopoly, such as rationalizing the subsidy, which has decreased to fifty percent, did not resolve the crisis. Thus the only solution was to remove subsidies altogether.

Milk formula types one and two had prices ranging between 160 and 165 thousand LBP; after the ministry of health lifted the subsidy, the price reached 335 thousand LBP.

Raising subsidies will not magically solve the problem of infant formula shortage. According to several companies, the cause is attributed to the fact that from the moment of ordering from abroad, the shipments need three months to arrive in Lebanon. However, sources of other companies confirmed that they are waiting for their shipments to arrive within weeks, which will automatically relieve the market.

The removal of subsidies on milk coincided with the removal of subsidies on some drugs for incurable and cancerous diseases. 

Forty-two of those medicines are not provided except in hospitals, and eleven are sold in pharmacies, noting that all of these medicines have alternatives or what is known as biosimilars. The Ministry of Health confirmed that it maintained the subsidy on all biosimilars.

The lifting of subsidies will lead to the availability of goods in the markets from now on. Still, it is clear that the monopolists have blackmailed the Lebanese for years and reaped huge profits, so who bears responsibility for a support policy that has proven its failure from foodstuffs to oil derivatives to medicine and milk? The worst thing is that it consumed the reserves of the Lebanese themselves.