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IDB mulls special disaster loans for Caribbean

Published:Friday | October 4, 2019 | 12:17 AMAlbert Ferguson/Gleaner Writer
An abandoned bicycle stands in a space that used to be a house in a neighbourhood destroyed by Hurricane Dorian in Abaco, Bahamas. Dorian hit the northern Bahamas on September 1, with sustained winds of 185MPH (295KPH), unleashing flooding that reached up to 25 feet (8 metres) in some areas.
AP
An abandoned bicycle stands in a space that used to be a house in a neighbourhood destroyed by Hurricane Dorian in Abaco, Bahamas. Dorian hit the northern Bahamas on September 1, with sustained winds of 185MPH (295KPH), unleashing flooding that reached up to 25 feet (8 metres) in some areas.

WESTERN BUREAU:

Funding to spark recovery after hurricanes and other natural disasters in the Caribbean and Latin America could become a major feature of the Inter-American Development Bank’s (IDB) suite of loans to countries in the region.

Teresa Turner-Jones, general manager of the Country Department Caribbean Group at the IDB, has said that the bank was contemplating adding a disaster clause to its loans offerings. She noted that this could become a reality within a year once its stakeholders were in agreement.

“Given that it’s [disaster clause loan] has been milling around in the organisation for the last 18 months and with The Bahamas, with [hurricane] Dorian, this happens.

“And whereas everybody is staring down how catastrophic that disaster was, I am feeling very confident that we are going to be able to do something very quickly,” Turner-Jones told The Gleaner in an interview.

“However, in the context of any multilateral institution – it doesn’t matter which one – ‘quickly’ could mean a couple of months, it could be six months, it could be a year, so I am not in a position to say how long it will take,” said the IDB official.

“It’s not as easy as just writing something up. A lot of people will have to agree. We have shareholders from all the big countries, and they have to agree that this is something the bank could do,” added Turner-Jones.

Prevalence of disasters

Turner-Jones said that the prevalence of disasters in the region was something that had caught the IDB’s attention, hence the decision to look at ways to provide the necessary support for affected countries to rebound.

“Senior management is also aware of the request, [and] since Hurricane Dorian, we have met with the prime minister of Bahamas.

“We have had discussions with PM [Mia] Mottley (Barbados), who has been a big advocate for this particular instrument, so I am feeling confident as the general manager for the Caribbean region that this is something that I could be looking into, and we can see, perhaps, in the future, that our contracts will have natural-disasters clauses in them,” added Turner-Jones.