WILLEMSTAD - Since 2020, the Curaçao Medical Center (CMC) has not been meeting its payment obligations to the government. This is said to be due to the hospital's precarious financial situation.
The payment obligations have reportedly not been fulfilled since six months after the hospital admitted its first patients. Due to the draft budget amendment, the government is eliminating the planned repayment and interest income for 2023 from the budget. Despite this step, the Financial Supervision Board (Cft) deems it necessary to maintain a provision for the loan to the CMC.
The government has provided the hospital with an advance of 20 million guilders for the care provided to the uninsured between 2019 and 2022. However, the Cft points out that no structural solution has been found for these costs.
Regarding repayments, Curaçao has repaid a total of 61 million guilders on received loans up to the fourth quarter of 2023. Of this amount, 50 million guilders were allocated to the partial repayment of the loan from the Netherlands for the settlement of Girobank. Additionally, Curaçao has made repayments on the loan for the construction of the CMC, namely 8 million, and on the bond loan refinanced in 2020.