World Bank inks loan to Antigua & Barbuda

English>>Business

Editor's Pick

World Bank inks loan to Antigua & Barbuda

(Xinhua) 15:06, August 16, 2013

Email|Print|Comments

twitter

facebook

Sina Microblog

The World Bank has completed a 10 million U.S. dollar loan deal with Antigua and Barbuda, according to reports reaching here from St. John's on Thursday.

The agreement, signed Wednesday, is the financial institution's first multi-million-dollar assistance to the two-island nation.

The loan, with a final maturity of 30 years and a five-year grace period, will finance the government's Public and Social Sector Transformation (PSST) project, which aims to "improve public sector efficiency, strengthen capacity and institutions, and deliver better services to its citizens and residents," the Bank said in a statement.

The bank's director for the Caribbean Francoise Clottes said Antigua and Barbuda had demonstrated its commitment to public and social sector reforms, which paved the way for the assistance deal.

"This is a country which has shown impressive progress in implementing structural reforms and we are confident that this project will contribute to assisting the government in its objective of resuming sustainable growth," Clottes said when the Bank announced its approval in June.

Antigua and Barbuda Finance Minister Harold Lovell highlighted the deal as a "bold, wide-ranging, empowering and timely" assistance, "given the positive turnaround in the economy".

Under the loan agreement, more than 4 million U.S. dollars will be allocated to support the introduction of an Active Labour Market Program, aimed at increasing the employability of the vulnerable, in particular people in the low income unemployed population between the ages of 18 and 50.

A further 2.5 million dollars is designated for modernizing human resource management, 1 million dollars to strengthen public institutions and another 1 million dollars to improve social protection programs through targeted benefits and a national beneficiary system.

The remaining funds will support the operations of a project management unit, including annual financial audits and process evaluations.

Antigua and Barbuda's debt currently stands about 1 billion dollars, nearly the same as the country's GDP.

（Editor：WangLili、Gao Yinan）