Conglomerate Ayala Corp. plans to deepen its presence in the healthcare sector by investing in medicine manufacturing and healthcare finance.
Ayala Corp. chief finance officer Jose Teodoro Limcaoco said in an interview the company was looking at manufacturing and healthcare finance, the two important components of the healthcare industry, aside from building hospitals.
“In medicines, you have distribution and manufacturing. We already have distribution through Generika and we are now looking at manufacturing,” Limcaoco.
Medicine manufacturing in the Philippines is dominated by United Laboratories of the Campos group, Astrazeneca Pharmaceuticals and Pascual Laboratories.
Limcaoco said the group was looking into healthcare finance, as there were only 4 million Filipinos with healthcare insurance.
“We know there is something missing there because while there are three big players [Maxicare, Medicard and Intellicare] and many other insurance firms, all of them only cover 4 million people and that number has not changed in 20 years,” Limcaoco said.
“We think there is space but we don’t know how to get into it. So we are still looking,” he said.
