Contract review for  4-years-late Health City

The future of the construction contract of the City of Health, in Ancon, which satraps of ex-president Ricardo Martinelli wanted to name after him is up in the air.

The contract of the problem-plagued project is being evaluated by the administration of the Social Security Fund (CSS) .

CSS director  Julio García Valarini , said that they are about to complete the studies to know if it is convenient to finalize the contract or apply the compliance bond to the construction company.

The Consorcio Construcciones Hospitalarias, SA -which includes FCC Construcción and FCC Construcción de Centroamérica-, in charge of the work, recently said, that it has no liquidity to continue the work and that it needs advance payments.

García Valarini said that this is a violation of the contract, which establishes that the company must have liquidity to be working.

He assured that the CSS is up to date with the payments. The last invoice that entered was for $2.5 million, whose disbursement is awaiting the endorsement of the Comptroller General.

The CSS has already disbursed $316.7 million from the City of Health out of the $554.2 million in which the project has been valued to date. This figure includes an addendum of $36.7 million approved in 2017. The balance payable is $ 237.5 million.

La Prensa reports that members of the CSS board of directors toured the facilities and found only  1,500 workers when the company had committed to having 3,000 as well as missing medical equipment.

The project, which started  in May 2012 with a completion planned for May 2015, is four years late and close to 65% complete, only 2% more than that reported by the CSS in December 2018.

The first phase (Institute of Neurology and Cardiology, among other areas) should have been ready last April, as established in the delivery schedule prepared last year.

THE PRICE TAG
 $517.5 million was the initial cost.

$36.7 million is the amount of the first addendum to the contract, for complementary works.

$300 million is the figure of the second addendum to build the new headquarters of the National Oncology Institute. It is pending approval from the Comptroller’s Office, which would mean  that the final amount of the project would exceed $850 million.