COVID-19 HELP: U.S. Offers New Funding Initiative to Caribbean

GEORGETOWN, Guyana – Caribbean community (CARICOM) countries have been urged to respond “positively” to a United States initiative that would allow regional countries to access funding from international financial institutions as they recover from the impact of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, the outgoing CARICOM chair, told the 20th special virtual meeting of CARICOM leaders that she had received correspondence earlier this month in her capacity as CARICOM chair from Washington on the issue.

Mottley said that the letter, signed by the U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Treasury Steven Mnuchin, provides, for the “first time, … a significant and bold initiative and opportunity to be able to work together with our partners within the hemisphere to see how best we can blunt the instruments or blunt the consequences of COVID-19 as we go forward.”

She said in the letter, it was made “absolutely clear” that Washington had committed itself and had developed a multifaceted framework that it believes will help the region address the immediate humanitarian needs as well as the long term recovery.

“Indeed, in the letter, it goes on to state specifically, first if requested, the United States would support temporary access to the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development just for COVID-29 related assistance for the Bahamas and Barbados, the two Caribbean graduates from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

“Let me say that we have been making and arguing this case for over two years and we have made it more recently again in all of our correspondence to the heads of the international financial institutions and to the heads of governments across the entire global community in the Americas, in Europe, in Asia.”

ACCESS

Mottley said the Caribbean had been saying that, at the very least, those countries in the region that have been graduated from access to concessional funding from the World Bank ought to be given access now, largely because the needs in a pandemic or the needs coming out of a hurricane “require that they have access to concessional funding that will allow us to meet the most urgent demands of survival first and then thereafter to begin the journey of transformation.”

She said the U.S. has, in its correspondence, “made it very clear that for this period of time that both countries, Barbados and The Bahamas should be able to access concessional funds from the World Bank going forward.

“Similarly they have also added that we will not object on the basis of income classification to borrowing by members of the Inter-American Development Bank to assist with economic or health recovery efforts,” Mottley said, adding “this is also substantive for us and this is what we were asking for.”

According to Mottley, the U.S. also indicated that “to address immediate liquidity needs, the United States has leveraged its leadership at the IMF to support a total of US$1.7 billion in new emergency funding for Caribbean countries –Bahamas, Barbados, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Haiti, Jamaica, St. Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines have benefitted from emergency IMF funding to address humanitarian and economic ramifications of COVID-19) pandemic.”