The Ashdod hospital tender committee yesterday published the pre-qualifying tender to design, build, finance, and operate the hospital. The hospital committee, headed by Ashdod deputy mayor Yehiel Lasri, is in no hurry to welcome the measure, and claims that it appears to be tantamount to a yet another pre-qualifying tender designed to drag out the process.
Ashdod is Israel's fifth largest city, with a population of 250,000, and is the largest city without a hospital.
The Knesset passed the Ashdod hospital construction law six years ago, overriding opposition of the government and the Ministry of Finance. The hospital tender committee comprises the Ministries of Finance and Health and the Israel Land Administration (ILA).
The hospital committee also claims that although a request for information (RFI) for the tender has already been carried out, only now has the next stage in the tender process been published. The pre-qualifying tender will weed out participants unqualified to proceed to the next stage. The committee says, "This information could have been obtained in the RFI stage."
According to the RFI stage, three entities are interested in fully or partly participating in the hospital project: the Ger Hassidic NPO called Health and Salvation, which wants to build a public hospital with private services amounting to 25% activity; Maccabi Healthcare Services' Assuta Medical Centers, which wanted to build a private hospital but later agreed to the model proposed by Health and Salvation; and Electra Real Estate Ltd. (TASE:ELCRE), which is mainly interested in the construction stage. All three entities have recently expressed an interest in collaborating.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on August 5, 2008
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2008