SHIJIAZHUANG - Hebei province in north China will receive a loan of $26 million from the government of Israel to build elder care facilities as the country opens its service sector to foreign investors.

The loan from the Israeli government will be spent on upgrading facilities of Chengde city central hospital and building an affiliated nursing home with 600 beds, said an official with the provincial finance department Friday.

It is the first time for this northern Chinese province to use foreign government loans in a medical and nursing facility project, he said.

The whole project will cost 200 million yuan ($31.75 million). The hospital will handle the remaining investment.

Foreign government loans can solve funding shortages and are a financial reform move by the province to promote social development, said the local government official.

China's nursing services for the elderly are developing rapidly. The number of people aged 60 or above reached 222 million in 2015, or 16.1 percent of the country's total population.

In Hebei alone, the population aged 60 and above had reached 11.2 million, or 15 percent of the province's total, by the end of last year.