PHL inks $300-M AIIB loan to buy Covid-19 vaccines

THE Philippine government signed on Monday a US$300 million loan agreement with Beijing-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) for the purchase of its Covid-19 vaccines.

Finance Undersecretary Mark Dennis Y.C Joven, who heads the Department of Finance’s (DOF) International Finance Group, confirmed this to Businessmirror.

With the signing of the $300-million AIIB loan, the government through DOF has finally completed securing loans amounting to US$1.2 billion (around P58.5 billion) which the country needed for its purchase of Covid-19 vaccines.

Apart from the country’s loan with AIIB, the DOF has already signed loans worth $500 million from World Bank and $400 million from Asian Development Bank on March 19.

Finance Secretary Carlos G.

Dominguez III on Monday said the “prompt and substantial financing extended by the country’s multilateral partners will help the government achieve its target of inoculating 70 million Filipinos or 100 percent of the adult population.”

The government, Dominguez added, is fully committed to accelerating the rollout of its national vaccination program in order to safely reopen the economy and restore the jobs lost since Covid-19 sparked a pandemic last year.

“Our multilateral partners’ swift response to our call for support reflects their confidence in the Philippines’s capability to effectively implement our Covid-19 response measures, including our national vaccination program,” he said at the virtual launching of Philippine loan agreements for vaccine procurement.

Dominguez said that under the terms of these loans, the multilateral institutions will help the Philippine government purchase the vaccines through their stringent procurement rules and guidelines and then pay the vaccine suppliers directly.

The finance department has also since clarified that the government’s budget for Covid-19 procurement remains at P82.5 billion, of which 70 billion will come from unprogrammed funds that will be unlocked by collecting additional revenues or by securing additional financing from the Philippines’s multilateral partner-institutions.

ROY DOMINGO POLICE and barangay personnel man a checkpoint at the boundary between Valenzuela City and Meycauayan, Bulacan, as Metro Manila and four provinces (Bulacan, Laguna, Cavite and Rizal) are placed under stricter enhanced community quarantine for one week due to the exponential rise in Covid-19 cases.