Ky­ron Reg­is 

ky­ron.reg­is@guardian.co.tt

The De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca (CAF) has do­nat­ed US$400,000 (ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT$2.7 mil­lion) to in­crease the safe­ty of peo­ple work­ing to­wards the de­ter­rence, re­duc­tion and nurs­ing of pa­tients af­flict­ed by COVID-19. 

In a re­lease CAF said: “T&T’s Min­istry of Fi­nance will re­ceive a US$400,000 do­na­tion from CAF to strength­en its emer­gency re­sponse mech­a­nisms and to re­in­force the pro­tec­tion, and safe­ty of med­ical per­son­nel work­ing in the pre­ven­tion, mit­i­ga­tion and care of pa­tients af­fect­ed by this glob­al COVID 19 pan­dem­ic.” 
With this do­na­tion CAF not­ed that it sup­ports the con­tain­ment and con­trol mea­sures that the Gov­ern­ment of T&T is un­der­tak­ing to pre­vent the spread of the virus.

CAF CEO  Luis Car­ran­za re­marked: “T&T’s ef­forts to con­tain and mit­i­gate the pan­dem­ic are head­ing in the right di­rec­tion, and this do­na­tion is the first one of sev­er­al ac­tions we are un­der­tak­ing to con­tribute to strength­en pre­ven­tion, mit­i­ga­tion and med­ical care, in or­der to pre­serve pub­lic health in the coun­try.”
 Fol­low­ing the guide­lines of the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO), CAF sup­ports its mem­ber coun­tries in deal­ing with this hu­man­i­tar­i­an emer­gency with ini­tia­tives such as the do­na­tion to T&T.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, CAF re­vealed that it has made avail­able, a US$2.5 bil­lion Emer­gency Cred­it Line for coun­ter­cycli­cal and rapid dis­burse­ment for those coun­tries most in need of ur­gent as­sis­tance.

Last year at a CAF sem­i­nar en­ti­tled En­vi­sion­ing Long-Term Sus­tain­abil­i­ty in T&T, An­to­nio Sil­veira, vice pres­i­dent for in­fra­struc­ture at the de­vel­op­ment bank in­di­cat­ed that over the past three years, CAF has ap­proved US$800 mil­lion in loans to T&T.

Sil­veira ar­tic­u­lat­ed that of the ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$800 mil­lion ap­proved in loans, a large part went to sup­port the coun­try’s fis­cal con­sol­i­da­tion pro­gramme and the rest for fund­ing road con­struc­tion, re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and main­te­nance pro­grammes.

CAF’s ac­tion fo­cuss­es on three main ar­eas. The first one is eco­nom­ic in­fra­struc­ture (giv­en its im­pact on mar­ket ac­cess, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and the coun­try’s in­te­gra­tion) the pri­vate sec­tor (as a cen­tral pil­lar of sup­port to pro­duc­tive trans­for­ma­tion) and the in­sti­tu­tion­al frame­work (re­vers­ing fea­tures with a neg­a­tive in­flu­ence on the busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment).