The Gaziantep integrated health campus public-private partnership (PPP) scheme has successfully achieved financial close, the first project in Turkey’s hospital PPP programme to reach financial close in 2017. Mott MacDonald has provided technical, environmental and social advice to the scheme’s lenders and will now monitor construction and operations in an ongoing role.
Gaziantep will be one of the largest health campuses in Turkey once complete, with a capacity of 1875 beds covering approximately 580,000 sq m. It will comprise a general hospital as well as specialist units for cardiovascular and oncology, psychiatry, women and children, rehabilitation and forensics.
Mott MacDonald’s due diligence during the scheme’s financing stage included reviewing potential technical issues and commercial implications arising from the project agreement and schedules, as well as the risk transfer through the construction and operational sub-contracts. The consultancy also appraised the stakeholders’ track-record and capabilities, as well as the design solution, construction planning, capital and operating expenditure, lifecycle costing, facilities management approach and payment mechanism.
Burak Sencer, Mott MacDonald’s territory manager for Turkey, said: “We are proud to help deliver healthcare facilities where they are most needed. The social and environmental impacts of developments such as this are of increasing importance to the international lending community who are governed to support increasingly sustainable infrastructure. Our due diligence concluded that this project will result in an important social infrastructure and deliver improved health services to the population, as well as resulting in limited, localised and manageable environmental and social impacts.”
Samsung C&T from South Korea, local firm Kayı İnşaat and Salini Impregilo from Italy are acting as sponsors of the project, along with Actus Gaziantep Fund, Turkish’s first private equity infrastructure fund. Lenders for the deal include Samsung Life, which is investing both equity and debt; the Export–Import Bank of Korea, Korea Trade Insurance Corporation, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the European Investment Bank. For some of the lenders, Gaziantep is the first health PPP project they have financed in Turkey.
Gaziantep forms part of a wider €10billion, 26,000 bed health transformation programme in Turkey, which includes the implementation of over twenty health campuses across the country, through PPP. Mott MacDonald has acted as lenders’ technical and environmental advisor on over 10 health projects in the country, including integrated campuses in Ankara and Istanbul. Two of these projects, Yozgat and Mersin, recently completed construction and are now operational.