Consumers warned of fake version of popular liniment

Mariecar Jara-Puyod, Senior Reporter

A visiting top management official of a 64-year-old pharmaceutical/consumer manufacturing institution in the Philippines has raised the need for UAE residents and tourists to be aware of the proliferation of the fake version of their popular liniment.

“Even way before we changed our distributor here in the UAE in late 2020 and our first roll-out in 2021, our previous business partner had already alerted us. It is only now we are taking action because it was only in 2018 (when the monitoring of our export sales were shifted to us),” International Pharmaceuticals Incorporated (IPI)-Marketing and Sales Vice President Ryan Glenn Butron told Gulf Today on Thursday.

Established in 1959 in Cebu Province, IPI has grown to be a market leader and has been exporting a wide range of products to 23 countries including the UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman and Yemen.

On the sidelines too of the press conference held in Dubai, Al Buldan Group founder/managing director Jacob Varghese showed to the media the file of nine complaints filed against nine low to middle-range wholesale and retail firms before the Dubai Economic Department, including the file of eight legal notices with Dubai Courts attestation against eight low to middle commercial establishments, concerning the sale of counterfeit Omega pain killer: “We have acted on these problem three months back yet.”

Philippine Ambassador to the UAE Alfonso Ver, Philippine Consul General to Dubai and the Northern Emirates Renato Duenas Jr., Abu Dhabi Police Col. Mohammad Al Dhaheri, and Al Buldan Group sponsor Hamad Mohamed Hussain Anwadi attended.

Butron had earlier said that IPI “subsidised the fees for the filing of the complaints to send out the strong message” that those behind the counterfeit production of the liniment are not only accountable for economic losses but more importantly are doing a disservice to everyone because they are providing the public a product way below world-accepted standards: “Good thing (this) is topical and not an oral medication that may for instance harm your liver.”

Butron, overseeing the domestic and international sales of IPI products worldwide except for India where set up was a separate sales support structure, has been visiting the UAE at least 17 times since 2018 except during the pandemic, when the Philippine production got stalled and the exports halted; yet, received reports indicated of continuous supply in the UAE market. IPI decided to partner with its business partner in Oman in the past 30 years, the Al Ain-based distributor in the UAE, “because our former distributor did not survive the pandemic.”

Including repeated reports from the huge chain of supermarkets and self-conducted spot checks since 2018, IPI discovered the 20 to 30 per cent difference between the genuine and counterfeit product: “So, if you are the wholesaler and you are getting the extra 20 to 30 per cent; then, you would rather patronize the fake. I do not care about if it were genuine or not. All I want is the extra profit and income.”

With Butron are IPI co-owner/Export Sales Manager Maria Celeste Wong and five other officials to help bring up the matter with concerned authorities. It was some time in December 2022, upon the orientation of then Ambassador-designate to the UAE Ver and six of his colleagues - set on their new overseas assignments - on Philippine exporting companies, that Wong approached Ver regarding the pressing challenge.

On Tuesday, the group was informed by one of the sellers they interacted with at the “wholesalers area in Dubai” about the fake production including the experience of this person regarding another product from the USA having been bogusly manufactured and whose sales had been had been affected in the past two years and six months.

Butron claimed the economic losses are between 70 and 80 per cent. He added the fake product is easy to decipher because of its glossy packaging with the previous distributor still in the “inkjet printing,” the production date is 2022 “with the previous distributor stipulated in the packaging when we already severed our partnership with them in 2020,” the expiry date is at least four years “when the genuine is only good for three years, the batch numbers are wrong because we have the control of our products,” and above all, the buyer would no longer patronise because of his dissatisfaction with the efficacy.

Ambassador Ver and Consul General Duenas said they are in full support of the undertakings done by the two business partners as any fake Philippine product besmirches the entire Philippines and its people.