NASSAU, Bahamas, May 13, 2024 — The Government is aiming to “break ground” on New Providence’s new $290m hospital by September 2024 after the project was approved for “concessionary financing” from a Chinese state-owned bank, The Tribune reported today in an article written by Business Editor Neil Hartnell.
Dr Michael Darville, minister of health and wellness, yesterday pledged to Tribune Business that the 50-acre facility to be constructed in the Perpall Tract area will be “a Bahamian hospital” after the China Export-Import Bank, the same institution that financed Baha Mar’s multi-billion resort, agreed to fully fund it via a 20-year loan with an interest rate set at just 2 percent.
Acknowledging that a Chinese company will be the lead contractor, and that Chinese labour always follows where Beijing’s capital goes, he nevertheless promised that the Government will seek to ensure Bahamians “get the best end of the stick” and that local workers outnumber their foreign counterparts on the project.
Bahamians will get their first glimpse of the design and plans for the new hospital, which will house maternal, child and adolescent care as well as diagnostics and a “hub for tele-medicine”, at two Town Hall meetings set for tomorrow and May 16. A flyer advertising the meetings, which has been seen by this newspaper, says it is targeted at communities such as Stapledon, Rock Crusher and Dolphin Drive.
Dr Darville affirmed that the necessary feasibility and environmental studies have shown that the planned hospital location, situated by the traffic light on the road between the ‘six-legged’ JFK Drive roundabout and Saunders Beach roundabout, is the best and most suitable location capable of “holding a multi-storey structure the size of Baha Mar”.
Acknowledging the “political” sensitivities of accepting financing from a Chinese-government owned bank, the minister said The Bahamas had reached out to the US equivalent – the Export-Import Bank of the US – and other government-owned development banks and multilateral institutions but there was little to no “appetite” by others to take the hospital project.
He pointed out that multiple other Caribbean nations, such as Barbados, Trinidad and Guyana, were already exploiting low-cost Chinese loans to finance major healthcare and other infrastructure projects throughout the region so The Bahamas’ decision has not been taken in isolation.
“Everything is coming together very nicely and is actually moving quite rapidly,” Dr Darville told Tribune Business. “First, it was trying to find financing and completion of the feasibility studies and the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), and going out to market to try and find resources.
“We got approved for the Chinese Concessional Funding Facility probably about a month ago. There is this Chinese concessional loan in the Caribbean where many Caribbean countries are trying to get funding for capital works projects.”
Dr Darville reiterated that the Government had initially gone “out to the markets” in a bid to finance the new hospital via a public-private partnership (PPP) model, where private investors would help to raise the necessary capital and provide expertise to construct the facility, but it was unable to access funding at reasonable interest rates/debt servicing costs.
See complete article in The Tribune at http://www.tribune242.com/news/2024/may/13/china-fund-new-hospital/
