Essential-Medicines FX Liquidity Leader

The mandate

The distributor buys active medicines and finished products in hard currency, pays duties and inland costs in naira, and sells a material share through hospitals and public programmes with slow or constrained price adjustment. Recent currency repricing invalidated landed-cost assumptions while letters of credit, bills for collection and supplier open-account terms moved on different timelines. Some high-value stock now preserves accounting margin but consumes FX needed for faster critical lines. The treasury director resigned during supplier renegotiations, leaving no executive owner of therapy-priority, import evidence and daily currency allocation.

The first thirty days require a product-to-cash map linking purchase order, regulatory clearance, funding method, currency requirement, shipment, duty, release, shelf life, customer terms, expected collection and recoverable price. By day sixty, the leader must identify documentary delays, duplicated FX requests, aged public receivables, unusable deposits and inventory that cannot return cash before expiry. Within the first ninety-day window, the board needs a thirteen-week currency-and-cash plan plus severe cases for further depreciation, bank-line reduction, port delay and hospital-payment slippage.

Decision rights include prioritising approved import funding within board policy, setting evidence standards, assigning collection escalation, accepting supplier payment sequences under executed contracts and stopping duplicate or unsupported currency requests. The interim may approve facility use inside delegated limits and chair the twice-weekly supply-liquidity room. Product registration, therapy substitution, patient allocation, quality release, regulated pricing, new borrowing, parallel-market dealing and changes to clinical or procurement standards remain outside delegated authority.

The recovery must be owned permanently before the next annual supplier cycle. The leader will define the senior import-treasury role, develop regional and product finance owners, document each bank and supplier route and observe the successor run three end-to-end import decisions plus two cash forecast cycles. The handover pack will identify expiring registrations, documentary exceptions, unresolved public debts, unused facilities, supplier commitments, currency sensitivities and product lines whose economics cannot support continued import.

The remit excludes medical need assessment, quality certification, regulatory filing, product allocation to patients, unlicensed currency activity, transfer-pricing conclusions and amendment of supplier or customer contracts without authorised owners. The leader cannot improve liquidity by misdating import documents, hiding stock expiry, paying facilitation value or favouring commercially attractive products over the board’s approved essential-medicine priorities. Banks, quality leaders, regulators and clinicians retain their formal responsibilities.

Why this seat is open

The finance departure occurred while FX scarcity was becoming a product-availability decision rather than a treasury inconvenience. Procurement, medical supply and collections each hold only one part of the import-to-cash truth. A temporary executive can impose transparent allocation, protect lawful funding channels and prepare a permanent leader without taking clinical or regulatory choices.

What you will own

• Build the product-to-cash map across order, approval, currency need, funding route, shipment, duty, shelf life, sale and collection.
• Establish daily cash and FX priorities reflecting therapy criticality, stock cover, documentary readiness, landed economics and supplier consequence.
• Reconcile letters of credit, collections, open-account terms, deposits, bank allocations and supplier statements to import evidence.
• Direct hospital, distributor and public-programme receivable escalation using dispute, approval, budget and collection facts.
• Model depreciation, facility loss, port delay, price constraint, stock expiry and customer slippage as connected availability stresses.
• Govern supplier and bank engagement within authorised terms while recording rejected routes, conditions, costs and compliance boundaries.
• Transfer the allocation forum, forecast, route register, controls, exception backlog and product-level sensitivities to permanent leadership.

Candidate qualifications

• Has led treasury or import finance for pharmaceuticals, medical supplies or another regulated essential-goods distributor in a constrained-currency market.
• Understands letters of credit, documentary collection, open-account supply, import documentation, duties, FX sourcing and bank limits.
• Can connect shelf life, product criticality, stock cover, regulated pricing and customer collection to currency allocation.
• Has negotiated supplier continuity and bank evidence during devaluation without resorting to unlicensed or opaque payment routes.
• Brings executive judgement separating economic loss, FX timing, documentary failure, credit delay and product-obsolescence exposure.
• Has transferred a high-frequency import-liquidity process to permanent leaders while preserving quality and regulatory boundaries.

Non-negotiables

• Can work onsite in Lagos and complete monthly supplier-market travel plus fortnightly bank and hospital reviews.
• Brings direct constrained-currency import finance; domestic working-capital management without documentary trade exposure is insufficient.
• Will not use unlicensed FX routes, misstate documents, conceal expiry or subordinate approved essential-therapy priorities to margin.
• Has no undisclosed relationship with banks, customs agents, suppliers, hospital buyers, public-programme officials or competing distributors.

1. 49 words maximum. Which product fact should influence FX allocation even when two imports offer similar accounting margin?
2. 49 words maximum. How would you distinguish currency scarcity from a documentary-credit execution failure?
3. 49 words maximum. What must a successor prove before controlling the weekly therapy-priority funding decision?