March 29 (SeeNews) - Dominic Fritz, mayor of Romania's western city of Timisoara, said he has signed a partnership agreement with International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank Group, for the construction of a municipal hospital.
The agreement will mark the first implementation of IFC's public-private partnership (PPP) scheme in Romania, through which the global lender will facilitate the development of the project by a private company, with the Timisoara municipality paying the first instalment only after the commissioning of the hospital, Dominic Fritz said in a social media post on Thursday.
Fritz estimates the hospital will have 300 to 500 beds and its construction will cost around 120 million euro ($129.4 million). The precise details will be determined through a pre-feasibility study that will begin in the following months.
The Timisoara mayor believes the hospital will be put into operation five to six years from now, after which many of the fourteen medical sections that are currently scattered across the city will be accomodated at the new location.
"We undertook a preassessment which allowed us to see the existing facilities, the existing context, and to confirm the necessity for the consolidation of the medical service in Timisoara," said Mehita Fanny Sylla, regional manager for IFC’s PPP division business in Europe and Central Asia, during a conference detailing the partnership with the Romanian municipality.
IFC, the private investment arm of the World Bank, focuses on supporting the private sector in emerging markets. The global lender's PPP scheme is a tool that helps national and municipal governments in developing countries partner with the private sector to improve access to education, energy, transport, healthcare, and sanitation.
($=0.9272 euro)