“The phrase ‘artificial shortage’ is very painful to hear - such a thing does not happen,” said PSP Group representative Guga Ramishvili in response to a question from MP Zaza Lominadze during a parliamentary commission hearing on price monitoring, which concerned the alleged artificial creation of shortages of certain medicines on the market.

As he noted, it is impossible for an organization to have medicines in stock and not sell them.

“The phrase ‘artificial shortage’ is very painful to hear. How can you imagine that any organization here could have stock in its warehouse and not sell it?! This is unimaginable. Such a thing does not happen. It would not even occur to anyone’s mind to do something like that. I cannot respond with any other sentiment,” said Guga Ramishvili.

Zaza Lominadze, in turn, stated that there had been several cases identified regarding certain oncology drugs where artificial shortages were allegedly created.

“What is the situation today? Do you have a complete list of oncology drugs? Is there ever an artificial shortage created in the supply of these medicines? You may recall that several cases were identified regarding these oncology drugs, when patients and clinicians could not find certain necessary medications. At the same time, we saw in the database that they had been imported into Georgia,” said Zaza Lominadze.