Caribbean Development Bank approves $100 million loan to Bahamas – Eye Witness News

NASSAU, BAHAMAS – The Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) announced that it has committed US$100 million to support the Bahamas as the country charts a course for economic recovery and resilience from the back-to-back disasters of the Hurricane Dorian and the COVID -19 pandemic.

The Bank’s Board of Directors approved the Policy Based Loan (PBL), the first in a series of two-part PBLs, with a second tranche of US$25 million to be appraised during the 2023/24 financial year.

The loan will support the government as it undertakes a program of policy, legislative and institutional reforms aimed at strengthening fiscal discipline and boosting revenue mobilization while protecting the vulnerable.

CBD Economics Department Director Ian Durant noted that the assistance package will help the Bahamas economy get back on track after the devastating effects of Hurricane Dorian in 2019 and the COVID-19 pandemic. 19 in 2020.

“As the Bahamas recovered from the impact of Dorian, the pandemic has created an additional shock to the Bahamas’ tourism-dependent economy. These shocks have led to an unprecedented crisis that has inflicted severe costs on the economy. and to the people of the Bahamas. Central Government (CG) indebtedness has risen sharply and political momentum to shore up public finances and unlock higher medium-term growth has been halted,” said Durant.

Despite this, he said the government is “making credible efforts to restore fiscal sustainability by implementing measures to increase revenue and reduce expenditure to put its fiscal accountability framework back on track” and that it is in this context that the CBD provided its support. The CDB provides policy-based loans to governments in response to urgent needs occasioned by external or internal economic imbalances, including debt crises and temporary shortages of foreign exchange reserves.