India has registered strong protest against rampant price gouging of Covid -19 material by Chinese suppliers while the country’s health care system is grappling with shortages of medical supplies, including oxygen, amid a devastating second wave of coronavirus infections that continues unabated.
India's Consul General to Hong Kong, Priyanka Chauhan, last week called on the Chinese government to do something about surging prices and increase cargo flights to get urgently needed supplies to India. "Even if there is a little bit of supply-demand pressure, there has to be some stability and predictability to product prices. And there has to be a sense of governmental-level support and efforts," she said.
Chinese firms have started charging more than double the usual rate for oxygen tanks and concentrators and sometimes four to five times higher of other medical supplies while cargo flights between the two countries have yet to return to normal after being suspended by China on the pretext of the surging wave of coronavirus in India last month.
Predictably, China has rejected accusations Chinese suppliers are price gouging Indian customers on desperately needed oxygen equipment. Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying told a press conference the price of oxygen concentrators was determined by supply and demand and the market is free to decide the prices and since Indian buyers are reaching out for supplies through several channels, the multiple requests are causing the prices to rise.
Hua said the global demand for oxygen concentrators was high while production capacity was being affected by a shortage of raw materials imported from Europe. “In addition, Indian buyers usually expressed their demand through a variety of channels, sometimes procurement through different channels may also over-amplify the demand to a certain extent, and thus affects the order of the market and push up the price,” expressing the inability of reining on private Chinese suppliers of their unethical profiteering.
Chinese government indirectly conveyed the message to the Indian government that had New Delhi reached out directly for help to Beijing, maybe the price wouldn't fluctuate this much. It is to be recalled that in a letter to Prime Minister Modi, Chinese President Xi Jinping had offered to help. India has made no request to China. But medical supplies brought privately are allowed. So, Chinese suppliers are profiting from India's devastating health crisis. And Beijing is simply turning a blind eye to this blatant extortion and piling more misery on the domestic pharma consumer durables sector.
The demand for medicine is overwhelming and causing the prices of drugs and medical equipment to skyrocket, while the demand for oxygen cylinders is far outpacing availability in India.
Chinese devices are sub-standard yet more expensive
Chinese suppliers have also been accused of sending sub-standard equipment to India. According to India Today expose, Chinese manufacturers, are substituting lower quality components but still charging higher prices than previously.
According to ABC/Reuters report, the Head of the Zhuo Ming Disaster Mitigation Development Centre, Nan Hao, said in a post on Weibo that Indian importers were being swindled. Nan responded to an Indian YouTube creator's video about buying hundreds of oxygen contractors for far above normal prices. He said he had encountered suppliers who were gouging and passing off household oxygen concentrators as medical devices in China too.
"Made in China is now the hope of hundreds of thousands of families in India but how many people's efforts will be lost because of the profiteering of a small group of people?" he said. "This small group of profiteers is a national shame."
