Planning Minister MA Mannan has said that the agreement to import the Covid-19 vaccine from Serum Institute of India (SII) has become ineffective in a sense.
He said: "We had an agreement with India to supply the vaccine. In a sense, it is now broken. There is no legal way out of the deal. Our position is very strong in all legal aspects.”
The planning minister was speaking after a meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (Ecnec) on Tuesday.
The minister said he did not expect India to export vaccines by neglecting its own citizens even though it was contractually bound to do so by law.
Mentioning India’s struggle to control Covid-19, he said Bangladesh was learning from the situation in India.
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The planning minister said the government had taken alternative measures to procure Covid vaccines and the measures were now in the final stages.
Bangladesh recently approved the Russian Sputnik V vaccine and the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine for emergency use in the country.
Officials believe that the country may get four million doses of the Russian vaccine within May.
Meanwhile, Health Minister Zahid Maleque on Monday said that Bangladesh would receive 500,000 doses of the Sinopharm vaccine from China as a gift by May 10.
