THE Clicks group is to open more stores in rural areas as part of its plans to expand the chain by 40 percent over the next few years, according to chief executive David Kneale. The group plans to expand by 150 stores to 500 nationally and expand existing stores through the opening of more in-store pharmacies. The company will open 30 stores a year to achieve this goal and add stores in semi-urban areas. The group has pharmacies in 220 stores and aims to have one in every store eventually. Kneale said the group planned to muscle in on the government's plan for the national health insurance scheme (NHI) adding that the voice of pharmacies had not been heard sufficiently yet. He said pharmacies could play a greater part in the provision of primary healthcare. According to Kneale, Clicks' proposal to the government is to add more medicines to the list that pharmacists are allowed to prescribe to patients as this would take the pressure off state clinics. South African regulation states that pharmacists can prescribe schedule one and two medicines, while anything higher has to be prescribed by doctors. Kneale said prescriptions needed to be "downscaled to relieve the pressure off doctors", and that pharmacists were able to play a far greater role than they currently did. But, Kneale said, the government had not been very creative about the NHI as it was too focused on other resource problems. Mohamed Loonat, the portfolio manager from Element One Investment Managers, said while the implementation of the NHI was still a long way off, a strong distribution network such as Clicks' would help as they could possibly bid to be the distributor of medicines. The legislative and regulatory uncertainty surrounding the maximum dispensing fee that pharmacists are allowed to charge has not had an effect on the group's trading. Funeka Beja, a retail analyst from Afena Capital said that if the Department of Health was to finalise the issue in this calendar year, it was unlikely that Clicks would implement changes immediately as they were currently charging well below the proposed changes. Kneale said the group had no firm intentions of proposing a black economic empowerment (BEE) deal involving ownership yet. But Loonat warned that if the group wanted a role in the NHI, it would have to focus on BEE.

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