Are Sinopharm jabs sold at a higher rate to SL?

COLOMBO (News1st): Concerns have raised on whether the Sinopharm vaccine had been sold to Sri Lanka at a higher rate compared to Bangladesh. On the 27th of this month, Shah Ali Farhad the special assistant to the Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina in a tweet said, the Bangladesh cabinet had approved a proposal to allocate 150 million US dollars to procure 15 million doses of the Sinopharm vaccine adding that this was a bilateral agreement struck between Bangladesh and China. Pursuant to the tweet, a discourse had emerged on social media, alleging that China which is offering the Sinopharm vaccine to Bangladesh at a rate of 10 USD each has sold the vaccine to Sri Lanka at 15 USD each. Responding to the backlash through a message on Twitter, the Chinese Embassy in Sri Lanka tweeted, " We checked with Chinese Embassy in Dhaka as well as #Sinopharm group. FYI: Bangladesh Health Minister has clarified last week that their procurement agreement including pricing is not finalized yet. The fake news on social media has already disturbed their ongoing negotiation". Subsequently, a Sri Lanka twitter user had questioned on the thread as to why China offers vaccines to different countries at varying prices. Responding to the query, the Chinese Embassy tweeted, " If you go through the web, you'll find that it's a common practice of different price range for all the pharma companies, and Sri Lanka gets a best corporate price with the fastest delivery". Vijitha Herath, a Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna MP said that countries that are below Sri Lanka in terms of economic status and stability have begun vaccinating their people. "The people are not receiving the vaccines in a proper manner," he pointed out. Meanwhile, opposition leader Sajith Premadasa has said that the vaccination drive in Sri Lanka is heading towards an unfortunate disaster at present. Issuing a statement, the Opposition leader pointed out that the government failed to implement a proper plan on allocating funds to import the jabs or for managing the vaccination drive in the country. The statement added that the government had irresponsibly disregarded the request of the opposition to import the vaccines in advance. The Opposition leader, in his statement, urged the government to pay equal importance to every citizen irrespective of their social status.