Bosnia's Federation (FBiH) entity is conducting negotiations with three Covid vaccine producers – from Russia, India and China and negotiations are nearing their end, the FBiH Prime Minister Fadil Novalic said Thursday, speaking to the FBiH House of Peoples.

According to him the negotiations with two US producers, Pfizer and Johnson&Johnson were aborted because the two only negotiate with states, adding that their response was sent to him, personally.

As for the Sputnik V vaccine, he said that they “teamed up with the Sarajevo Canton in the procurement of this vaccine.”

“The Sarajevo Canton is the project manager, and we only help them with the necessary papers. The Russians do not want to negotiate with the cantons, but we have explained through embassies and [diplomatic] channels that we are not a state, but a state entity. These are pre-contractual operations and we need to procure 500,000 vaccines, and they are a likely source,” said Novalic.

They also communicated with AstraZeneca and managed to get permission from the Government of England and permission from the Prime Minister of India. They still have to determine the wholesaler. The competition was announced last Thursday and it will be closed on Friday. They planned to purchase around 500,000 doses of Covidshield.

“The fourth channel is towards Sinopharm, a Chinese state-owned company that goes through interstate communications. They sent us six steps to complete, we are on the fifth. A negotiating commission should now be formed. We picked out the wholesaler because the state of BiH chose Hercegovinainalijek during the procurement of 200,000 of the same vaccine, so we just copied that. The next step is to sign the contract where the details of the price will be stated and when it will arrive,” said Novalic.

He pointed out that the prices differ from different circles they are in contact with, so for example the prices in the primary cycle were around $10, in the secondary circle they were $20, and in the tertiary, he cited the example of Israel which paid $37.

“We have to be prepared for price variations. We intend to submit the contract to the Parliament,” said Novalic.