Philippines inks $100 million WB loan for COVID action

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine government officially finalized on Tuesday a $100-million loan agreement with the World Bank to strengthen the country’s capacity to respond to the coronavirus disease 2019 or COVID-19 pandemic, the Department of Finance (DOF) said yesterday.

According to the DOF, the $100-million loan for the Philippines’ COVID-19 Emergency Response Project (ERP) was signed by Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez and Achim Fock, World Bank acting country director for Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand.

“The World Bank has again acted swiftly to help developing economies like the Philippines meet the ever-increasing demand for medical care and health facilities resulting from the coronavirus-induced global health crisis. We thank the World Bank once again for supporting our efforts to contain the spread of the virus and expand our capacity to prevent and prepare for emerging infectious diseases in the future,” Dominguez said in a statement.

The loan has a maturity period of 29 years, inclusive of a 10-year grace period.

It will be fully financed by the World Bank with no counterpart funding needed from the Philippine government.

According to the DOF, the implementation of the COVID-19 ERP is expected to commence in early May.

The project seeks to strengthen the country’s emergency COVID-19 health care response and improve laboratory capacity at the national and sub-national levels to improve efforts in preventing and responding to infectious disease.

It also involves the implementation of COVID-19 management, monitoring and evaluation, and contingent emergency response measures.

To be implemented by the Department of Health (DOH), the project will help the government procure medical and laboratory equipment and reagents; medical supplies,

including personal protective equipment (PPEs), medicines and ambulances; and isolation and quarantine facilities.

The DOF said World Bank may also provide assistance in accessing existing supply chains through its Bank-Facilitated Procurement (BFP), “which will be beneficial considering the current disruptions in the usual supply chains for medical consumables and equipment for COVID-19 response.”

In an earlier statement, World Bank said the COVID-19 ERP loan aims to expand the Philippines’ laboratory capacity by retrofitting the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) and six sub-national and public health laboratories in Baguio, Cebu, Davao, Surigao City, and Manila; and financing the construction of laboratories in priority regions that currently do not have these facilities.

It will also help the DOH come up with design standards for hospital isolation and treatment centers in managing patients with Severe Acute Respiratory Infections (SARI).