The Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank (CDB) has ap­proved a US$10 mil­lion line of cred­it aimed at ex­pand­ing ac­cess to fi­nanc­ing for small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es (SMEs) in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

In a state­ment on Tues­day, the Bar­ba­dos-based in­sti­tu­tion said the fi­nanc­ing forms part of the Fourth Agri­cul­tur­al and In­dus­tri­al Line of Cred­it for De­vel­op­ment Fi­nance Lim­it­ed (DFL). The pack­age com­pris­es a US$10 mil­lion loan from the Bank’s Or­di­nary Cap­i­tal Re­sources, along­side a grant of US$126,000.

Ac­cord­ing to the CDB, the ini­tia­tive is de­signed not on­ly to im­prove ac­cess to fi­nance for SMEs but al­so to strength­en in­sti­tu­tion­al ca­pac­i­ty and sup­port sus­tain­able and in­clu­sive eco­nom­ic growth. The funds will be on-lent by DFL to busi­ness­es op­er­at­ing in key pro­duc­tive sec­tors, in­clud­ing agri­cul­ture, man­u­fac­tur­ing, tourism and en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy.

The Bank said the fa­cil­i­ty is ex­pect­ed to ad­dress per­sis­tent fi­nanc­ing gaps faced by SMEs, en­hanc­ing com­pet­i­tive­ness, sup­port­ing mar­ket ex­pan­sion and gen­er­at­ing em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties. In ad­di­tion to lend­ing, the grant com­po­nent will fund ca­pac­i­ty-build­ing ini­tia­tives with­in DFL, in­clud­ing train­ing in En­vi­ron­men­tal and So­cial Man­age­ment Sys­tems, as well as the de­vel­op­ment and im­ple­men­ta­tion of a Gen­der Equal­i­ty Pol­i­cy and Ac­tion Plan.

“These in­ter­ven­tions will strength­en DFL’s abil­i­ty to man­age en­vi­ron­men­tal, so­cial and cli­mate-re­lat­ed risks, while ad­vanc­ing gen­der-re­spon­sive lend­ing,” the CDB not­ed.

Di­vi­sion Chief in the Pri­vate Sec­tor Di­vi­sion at the CDB, Lisa Hard­ing, said the fa­cil­i­ty un­der­scores the Bank’s con­tin­ued com­mit­ment to pri­vate sec­tor de­vel­op­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“Through this fourth line of cred­it, we are deep­en­ing our sup­port to SMEs as key dri­vers of in­no­va­tion, job cre­ation and eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Hard­ing said. “This project di­rect­ly aligns with the Bank’s new 10-Year Strate­gic Plan by strength­en­ing pri­vate sec­tor de­vel­op­ment, ad­vanc­ing cli­mate re­silience and pro­mot­ing in­clu­sive growth—par­tic­u­lar­ly by em­pow­er­ing women-owned busi­ness­es and sup­port­ing sus­tain­able in­vest­ments.”

The CDB said its sup­port comes at a crit­i­cal junc­ture as Trinidad and To­ba­go in­ten­si­fies ef­forts to di­ver­si­fy its econ­o­my be­yond the en­er­gy sec­tor. With mod­er­ate eco­nom­ic growth and in­creas­ing de­mand for cred­it in non-en­er­gy in­dus­tries, the Bank be­lieves the project will play a cat­alyt­ic role in strength­en­ing pri­vate sec­tor ac­tiv­i­ty and eco­nom­ic re­silience.

It added that DFL has demon­strat­ed strong fi­nan­cial per­for­mance and gov­er­nance, cit­ing sus­tained growth in rev­enues, prof­its and as­sets, as well as a track record of suc­cess­ful­ly im­ple­ment­ing pre­vi­ous CDB-fund­ed pro­grammes. The in­sti­tu­tion will be re­spon­si­ble for ex­e­cut­ing the project, with over­sight from the CDB through on­go­ing mon­i­tor­ing and eval­u­a­tion.

The ini­tia­tive al­so aligns with the Bank’s broad­er strate­gic pri­or­i­ties, in­clud­ing pri­vate sec­tor de­vel­op­ment, cli­mate re­silience and in­clu­sive growth, with a par­tic­u­lar fo­cus on sup­port­ing women-owned en­ter­pris­es and busi­ness­es en­gaged in green and sus­tain­able ac­tiv­i­ties.