El Salvador opposition claims govt 'hiding' IDB loan for hospital

El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele kicked off works on a US$61.2mn project to rebuild Rosales hospital in capital San Salvador on June 15, but opposition figures claim that the project is immersed in a lack of transparency regarding the funding.

Bukele has vowed to carry out the hospital upgrade since taking office in 2019 after it was first proposed during ex-president Salvador Sánchez Cerén's administration in 2014-19. 

The funding was approved before Bukele took over via a US$170mn IDB loan, which was expected to allow the new government to begin works right away.

“The funds for the new Rosales hospital are there, but we will work on new designs to have a first-world hospital, the best in Central America,” Bukele said in August 2019, although the government has only just begun the works.

“Some say we took too long to begin and they are right. But we took four years to start with a hospital that in 121 years nobody else built,” Bukele said at the launch ceremony last week. 

During the delay, the government also introduced the San Salvador municipal works department (DOM) as the executing party and announced that the hospital would be built with State funds, which raised eyebrows considering the international loan.

During the construction ceremony last week, Bukele did not even mention the IDB loan, which has raised suspicion regarding the destination of that money.

“He [Bukele] is trying to hide what they have done with the funds from that loan,” former deputy minister of health policy, Eduardo Espinoza, was reported as saying by outlet elsalvador.com. Espinoza served under the previous administration and oversaw the approval of the US$170mn loan.

According to local media, the initial capex of the new Rosales hospital topped US$80mn, but was later trimmed by the government to US$61.2mn, with the remainder of the loan funds supposedly being used to finance other projects, including the construction of a hospital in Nejapa municipality.

However, left-wing opposition lawmaker Anabel Belloso said that the capex adjustment has not been explained.

“He [Bukele] took four years to lay the first stone of Rosales hospital, even though US$80mn from the US$170mn IDB loan has been available since 2019. Now he says that the funds are coming from state coffers. He changes the amounts and doesn't explain what happened with the loan or which works will be cut,” she said, according to elsalvador.com.

News outlet Infodemia reports that the IDB funds are still in the coffers of the health ministry (Minsal), but BNamericas was unable to confirm that claim.

Belloso also believes that Bukele’s administration faces challenges to carry out the works, as she says was proven by its inability to award the construction contract through a tender, instead assigning the works to the San Salvador DOM, which “knows nothing about building hospitals” and "has no technical resources to do so." 

Information released last week indicates that the revamped hospital will have 87 medical offices and 44 medical boxes, according to the health ministry. The works are expected to take 18 months.

“The first of the various stages of construction is now underway with the building of the medical offices,” health minister Francisco Alabi said on Friday in an interview posted on Twitter.

The second stage will include refurbishment of the current hospital building, according to news outlet La Prensa Gráfica. 

Photo: Rosales hospital site. Source: Presidencia de El Salvador