Press Release
Thursday, June 22, 2006 U.S. SMALL BUSINESS USES OPIC LOAN TO PRODUCE
AFFORDABLE MEDICATIONS IN GHANA
WASHINGTON, D.C. – A U.S. small business is using a loan from the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) to establish the first fully-integrated pharmaceutical manufacturing facility in West Africa, producing at affordable prices the active ingredients used in medications to treat endemic diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.
LaGray Chemical Company of Chicago is using a $4.9 million OPIC loan to construct a pharmaceutical manufacturing facility in Nsawam, Ghana, where it will produce for sale, active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), the raw material used in medications, and formulate them into high-value finished dosage forms (FDFs) for distribution throughout West Africa. It will produce generic antiretrovirals, anti-infectives against opportunistic infections , anti-hypertensives, drugs against chloroquine-resistant malaria, and topical anti-infectives.
The facility is specifically designed and being constructed to meet standards of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the World Health Organization.
Other than in South Africa, there are currently no API production facilities for critical drugs in sub-Saharan Africa. In addition, as much as 70 percent of FDFs in sub-Saharan Africa are imported; local production of the remaining 30 percent is largely focused on pain killers, penicillins and chloroquine, a drug against which the malaria parasite has become resistant. The project will therefore introduce to the region the technology for producing the fine chemicals in drugs for treating endemic diseases such as HIV-AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, and at affordable prices.
The project will also create as many as 146 permanent local jobs, 98 of them professional positions.
“West Africa relies on foreign sources to meet its basic pharmaceutical needs, a fact which compromises its ability to respond to health care crises in a timely and affordable manner. By meeting a need for critical – and affordable – medications for diseases such as HIV/AIDS and malaria, this project marks the beginning of the region’s progress toward pharmaceutical self-sufficiency,” said OPIC President and CEO Robert Mosbacher, Jr.
“Working with a U.S. small business, OPIC is pleased to support a project that provides so many important developmental benefits, as well as employment opportunities and the transfer of vital entrepreneurial skills,” Mosbacher added.
OPIC was established as an agency of the U.S. government in 1971. It helps U.S. businesses invest overseas, fosters economic development in new and emerging markets, complements the private sector in managing risks associated with foreign direct investment, and supports U.S. foreign policy. Because OPIC charges market-based fees for its products, it operates on a self-sustaining basis at no net cost to taxpayers.
OPIC’s political risk insurance and financing help U.S. businesses of all sizes invest in more than 150 emerging markets and developing nations worldwide. Over the agency’s 35-year history, OPIC has supported $164 billion worth of investments that have helped developing countries to generate more than 732,000 host-country jobs and $13 billion in host-government revenues. OPIC projects have also generated $69 billion in U.S. exports and supported more than 264,000 American jobs.