The law giving 20 percent discounts to Senior Citizens is causing a lot of worry among small pharmacies, known as Boticas. They say they are not making money.
These problems came to the fore during a public hearing at the City Council last Monday, when Botica owners asked for help from the City.
They told the City Councilors that the implementation of the 20 percent discount on medicines for senior citizens is causing heavy losses for their small operations. They want the law changed.
There is a paradox, however. While they all be claim to be losing money, there’s more than 60 of them in Dumaguete City alone! The situation isn’t any different from the sari-sari store, whereby the next door neighbor decides to open his own store when he sees his neighbor making good business.
Admittedly, a 20 percent discount is a big discount, especially if you don’t make that big a mark-up. But couldn’t this be a simple case of cut-throat competition because of the sari-sari store mentality?
If there were fewer boticas in the City, they could make money by selling to younger clientele while still giving senior citizens their due. This is also a challenge to diversify. That’s the secret of big pharmacies–aside from medicine, they sell groceries, cosmetics, and what-have-you.
There’s also a case of a big bookstore chain which admits they are not really selling a lot of books but they make a lot of money by the pens, paper, and everything else they sell.
By having better business sense, we could actually save the Senior Citizens law from being amended.
