IDB provides more development assistance to Guyana than any partner
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has long been the dominant development partner in Guyana. Since 2000, the IDB has provided more development assistance to Guyana than any other partner, averaging USD 45 million in annual approvals.
Though infrastructure has been the primary focus of the Bank’s assistance from 2012 to 2016, it noted in one of its most comprehensive reports that it has provided significant support in the social sectors in the early 2000s and, more recently, for natural resource management. Further to this, the InterAmerican Development Bank noted that it had developed a 20122016 Guyana Country Strategy (CS), which proposed four priority areas and a smaller lending envelope than one of its previous CS period. The four “priority areas” were sustainable energy, natural resource management, private sector development, and public sector management.
The CS also included three “areas for continued strategic dialogue”: water and sanitation, transport, and citizen security. The Bank noted that the Amerindian communities’ needs would be addressed as a “crosscutting theme.”
The CS proposed a lending envelope between
USD 82 million and
USD 103 million, much less than the USD 187 million approved in the previous CS period. Although the CS objectives were aligned with Guyana’s policy priorities and development challenges, the implemented programme was relevant only in some sectors. The CS was consistent with the goals that the Government of Guyana articulated in its Low Carbon Development Strategy. The Bank noted that an important part of the Government’s development strategy was an agreement with the Government of Norway to finance a mechanism (known as the GRIF) for results-based payments for forest climate services of up to USD 250 million by 2015.
The IDB said that its programmes in natural resource management and sustainable energy included multiple operations whose objectives were clearly aligned to the CS objectives. However, IDB’s programmes in private sector development and public sector management were not closely aligned with the CS objectives and expected outcomes. Although not prioritized in the CS, the Bank has been engaged for decades in water and in sanitation and transport, and these programmes were aligned with the country’s development challenges. Also, the strategy did not identify the low institutional capacity of the public sector as a risk to the program.
(Kaieteurnews)