Inter American Development Bank President discusses finances with GOB

luis alberto moreno

The President of the Inter American Development Bank, Luis Alberto Moreno, is on a two day visit to Belize.  He is meeting with Prime Minister Dean Barrow, other government officials and representatives of the private sector to discuss the IDB’s continued financing of development projects in Belize and other possible areas of funding. Other senior staff from the IDB are also meeting with top officials of the Government of Belize. According to the PM, the discussions also include reconstruction after Hurricane Richard.

Dean Barrow

“We’ve just concluded an initial session which was confined to the President and his closest advisors, myself and the public officials, some of the government officials and I raised with the president the possibility of some post-Richard reconstruction financing, and I am happy to tell you that those discussions have gone extremely well indeed. We have been assured that the president will personally oversee the fast tracking of an initial funding component that will help us in putting some mitigation effort in the areas that have been particularly hard hit, but that will not be limited to those areas. We’re going to look at drainage, at that street rehabilitation, and at the possibility of a sea wall in the Port Loyola Area. We can get into some of the details a little bit later on. Immediately after this press conference, the president will meet with some of the private sector people and that of course is his principal mission on this visit—to see the ways in which the I.D.B. and its private sector arm can help our private sector.”

Dean Barrow

Luis Alberto Moreno, President, I.D.B.

“We’ve come with a very large group from the bank: our vice presidents, our regional managers; who all deal in one way or the other, different areas of the private sector. We also have a regional economist and we’ve also brought a number of academics who have studied some of the challenges that Belize has especially its development in the private sector. We hope to hold a meeting that will begin tomorrow and extend through Saturday. The purpose is to alert the different components of the business community in Belize of the different kinds of things that we can do. On the other hand we also had the chance; I was able to speak on the phone with Prime Minister here soon after the hurricane happened. One of the things we spent some time is one of the thing the Prime Minister challenges to do which is not only to have an expedited line of credit but also one that will be holistic in nature and could look at some of the disaster risk mitigation components that are going to be needed. To think of really a way to building back better which is really what you want to have in this kinds of disasters and use these opportunities which are terrible for the communities so that we can do something better for the future. The bank have been doing some planning in this regard, there’s a number of studies that have been done in the past and we plan to build on that and in the weeks ahead, we will be working very closely with the Prime Minister and his team.”

On Friday, the President and senior IDB officials will participate in a symposium with members of the private sector organized by the Belize Chamber of Commerce. This is the first time the IDB President will hold discussions with the private sector in Belize with the view of establishing lending programs for private sector financing, which would complement its on-going program of public sector financing for development projects in our country.