The Diplomat
The Spanish government has informed the Honduran government that the 70 million euro loan it had granted on very favourable terms to build three new hospitals will not be disbursed if Xiomara Castro’s government wants to use it for something else.
The Spanish offer was made at the end of 2020 during Queen Letizia’s visit to Honduras after the passage of hurricanes Eta and Iota, reiterated by the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, in August 2022, during a visit to the Central American country, and finalised in an agreement in February of this year, during the visit of the Honduran president, Xiomara Castro, to Madrid.
The purpose of the loan, charged to Fonprodre (Fund for the Promotion of Development), with less than 1% interest, was to build and equip new hospitals in Ocotepeque, Salamá and Santa Bárbara, as part of the Programme to Strengthen the Hospital Network in Honduras.
However, a few weeks ago, the Honduran Minister of Finance, Rixi Moncada, informed Spain that she was renouncing this project and asked that the funds be redirected to “other purposes”, apparently the modernisation of three hospitals in Tegucigalpa.
The rejection of her request reached the minister on 8 September in a letter from the Spanish ambassador in Tegucigalpa, Diego Nuño García, in which he stated that the Honduran government’s new objectives “were not part of the programme discussed between both parties” and that, once the proposal had been examined by the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), the conclusion was that “this type of operation entails a series of technical implications that make Fonprode funding impracticable”.
The ambassador regretted the decision of Xiomara Castro’s government, recalling that, after three years of work, the operation was ready for approval and the project could be completed in 2025, as Honduras had requested.
Finally, Diego Nuño reiterated the willingness of his Embassy and the AECID “to explore other alternative projects within the priority areas and sectors of cooperation identified in the Country Partnership Framework, agreed between Spain and Honduras for the period 2020-2023, as well as in the framework of other cooperation initiatives such as Global Gateway”.
