The new Bratislava hospital will not be built via the PPP project

The Health Ministry now has to introduce a new plan by March 2017 - but plans have been in the works since 1982.

Health Minister Tomáš DruckerHealth Minister Tomáš Drucker (Source: SITA)

The new university hospital in Bratislava will not be built via the public-private partnership (PPP) agreement as was originally planned. The government approved the proposal of the Health Ministry to scrap the project as it could not be implemented under the current conditions, the TASR newswire reported.

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The PPP project was launched by the previous Robert Fico government, but the agreement with the winning bidder has not been signed. As the current government promised to launch the operation of the new hospital in its programme statement, Health Minister Tomáš Drucker (Smer nominee) is expected to submit the new project of construction by the end of March 2017.

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The Health Ministry has confirmed that the planned redistribution of risks of the project between the private and public sectors is “very ambitions and has limited precedent in other projects”, as reported by TASR. The current version would not allow financing the PPP project via commercial banks, which means that the investor would have to allocate the necessary funds. As a result, the PPP project would not be as advantageous as originally expected.

Read also: State money to be used to build new Bratislava hospital Read more 

The PPP project has already cost the state some €3 million. The Health Ministry paid €720,000 excluding VAT for a feasibility study which confirmed the advantageousness of the PPP project. It spent athe further €2.25 million excluding VAT on consulting linked to preparation and implementation of the project, TASR wrote.

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Last year’s analysis of the Institute for Financial Policy (IFP), which runs under the Finance Ministry, suggested that the hospital’s construction via PPP project is the least advantageous and that it would be better if it was built only by the state. The analysts from the INEKO think tank, however, said the analysis was too simple.

Both institutions agreed that it would be the worst decision to do nothing at all.

The construction of the new university hospital already started in 1982. According to the latest proposal, it should be built at Patrónka, on the site of former Hospital of St Michael, which was moved to the city centre. Construction was planned to begin in 2017.

Drucker, however, described the locality at Patrónka as problematic. He now considers building the hospital either in Rázsochy (where original construction began) or Ružinov districts, TASR wrote.

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