DOF releases $100M out of $1.2B loans for COVID-19 vaccine procurement

FILE PHOTO: A woman holds a small bottle labeled with a “Coronavirus COVID-19 Vaccine” sticker and a medical syringe in this illustration taken October 30, 2020. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic

MANILA, Philippines — Around $100 million has so far been released from the $1.2 billion worth of loans that the Philippine government secured for the purchase of COVID-19 vaccines, an official of the Department of Finance (DOF) said Friday.

“How much has been released or drawn from the facility to pay for the vaccines, I think right now $100- million pa lang iyong nadu-draw,” Finance Undersecretary Mark Dennis Joven said in a Laging Handa public briefing.

He explained that the government had to “backload” the payment when the vaccines are already ready to be delivered.

“Para hindi ho tayo maipit na nagbayad tayo ng pera pero hindi ho natin nakuha iyong vaccine,” he said.

The government has secured $500 million from the World Bank, $400 million from the Asian Development Bank, and $300 million as project loan financing for the country’s procurement of vaccines.

Apart from the $1.2 billion in loans, the Philippine government has allocated P12.5 billion in its national budget this year for vaccines. All in all, the Philippines has available funds of around P72.5 billion for the vaccination program.

Among the vaccines that the government has procured, only 2.5 million doses of CoronaVac, the vaccine developed by China’s Sinovac Biotech, have so far delivered in the Philippines.

Other vaccines that arrived in the Philippines, which were 1.5 million CoronaVac doses and 525,600 AstraZeneca shots from the global initiative COVAX facility, were donated.

EDV