Julie Bishop: Australia will use private firms like Coca-Cola to deliver aid

Calla Wahlquist
29 June 2015
Foreign minister tells Liberal federal council that there is too much waste in aid spending and partnering with the private sector will achieve better results
The Australian government will partner with private companies such as Coca-Cola to distribute medical aid, foreign minister Julie Bishop has said.
Speaking at the Liberal federal council on Saturday, Bishop said she was not satisfied with the way Australia had distributed aid in the past, saying there was, “too much duplication, too much waste, not enough of a focus, spending money, doing what we’ve always done and not coming up with a better result.”
Bishop said move toward private sector networks was part of a focus on the “economic security for the recipients of our aid.”
The foreign aid budget is set to lose $4bn a year over the next four years. The cuts, outlined in the 2015 federal budget, will put Australia’s foreign aid spend relative to income at the lowest levels since a formal aid program was introduced 40 years ago.
“One problem that remote villages and regions in the Pacific face is getting access to essential medicines and I’ve visited places where these villages and health centres have been without fundamental supplies for weeks, they just can’t get it through,” Bishop said.
“But it was observed that Coca-Cola is available everywhere throughout the Pacific. Any remote village, any hill top, Coca-Cola is there. So we’ve decided to partner with the private sector to use their distribution networks, their supply chains, to get essential medicines to where they are needed.”
Coca-Cola already uses its distribution networks to deliver drugs for HIV/Aids, tuberculosis and malaria in a number of African nations, in partnership with the Global Fund, supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
In a statement on its website, the Global Fund says the global soft drink company has the “specific expertise” required to get essential medicine into isolated areas.
“It is widely recognised that the Coca-Cola Company has unparalleled expertise in distribution and supply management worldwide,” it says.
“In Africa in particular, its network of local bottlers is critical to reach consumers.”
The program ran as a pilot in Tanzania in 2010, and was found to reduce lead time in delivering medicine by 25 days and increase the availability of medicine by 30%. It is set to expand to 10 countries in Africa by 2019.