DEVELOPMENT Bank of the Philippines (DBP) extended a P730-million loan for a new seven-storey hospital in Quezon to boost healthcare capacity in the province.
The loan will be used for the construction and development of Allied Care Experts (ACE) Medical Center Sariaya, Inc. which will be the first Level 2 hospital in Quezon, the bank said in a statement.
Healthcare institutions are placed under this classification when they provide facilities such as an intensive care unit and have specialist doctors.
Once completed, the hospital will have a 104-bed capacity. It is projected to improve the bed-to-population ratio in Quezon to 1:1,134 from the current 1:1,175 ratio. Sariaya town currently has only two community hospitals with a total bed capacity of 30.
“DBP supports this latest ACE project as it will help address the pressing need for higher quality medical care in Sariaya and the entire Quezon. Financing infrastructure projects that will produce a ripple effect in communities remains a top priority for DBP, especially during these challenging times,” DBP President and Chief Executive Officer Emmanuel G. Herbosa said in a statement.
The Sariaya unit will be the ninth branch of ACE Medical Center nationwide.
DBP, which has been designated as the country’s infrastructure bank by the government, saw its net income fall by 30.4% to P3.9 billion in 2020 from P5.6 billion in 2019 due to higher loan loss provisions and operating expenses.
It is the sixth-largest bank in the country in terms of its assets with $1.042 trillion as of end-2020. — LWTN