Bar­ba­dos has signed a US$500 mil­lion (One BDS$=US$0.50 cents) agree­ment with the Ex­port-Im­port Bank of the Unit­ed States (EX­IM Bank), tar­get­ing crit­i­cal sec­tors such as re­new­able en­er­gy, cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty, wa­ter in­fra­struc­ture, and mar­itime se­cu­ri­ty.

EX­IM is the of­fi­cial ex­port cred­it agency of the US fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley and EX­IM chair­man and pres­i­dent, Re­ta Jo Lewis, signed the Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU), which will re­main in ef­fect un­til 2026.

The agree­ment is set to ex­pand Amer­i­can ex­port op­por­tu­ni­ties while bol­ster­ing Bar­ba­dos’ in­fra­struc­ture and eco­nom­ic re­silience.

“It is my plea­sure to be able to sign this Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing, which is a state­ment of gen­er­al in­tent and sets forth no le­gal du­ties at this time, but sets the in­ten­tion of both sides to be able to work to­geth­er and to have ac­cess to a line of cred­it of US$500 mil­lion on across these four ar­eas,” Mot­t­ley said, hail­ing the MOU as a tes­ta­ment to strength­en­ing ties be­tween the two coun­tries.

“No­body signs an MOU with a line of cred­it if they don’t have con­fi­dence in you,” she said,  link­ing the agree­ment to Bar­ba­dos’ re­cent suc­cess­es, in­clud­ing debt-for-na­ture and debt-for-cli­mate swaps.

The part­ner­ship with EX­IM Bank un­der­scores Bar­ba­dos’ push to­wards achiev­ing car­bon neu­tral­i­ty by 2030 and aligns with re­cent leg­isla­tive strides like the Cy­ber­crime Bill, aimed at for­ti­fy­ing dig­i­tal se­cu­ri­ty.

Lewis high­light­ed the broad­er im­pli­ca­tions of the agree­ment, ty­ing it to the out­go­ing Biden-Har­ris ad­min­is­tra­tion’s strat­e­gy to deep­en re­la­tions with the Caribbean.

“We see Bar­ba­dos as a key coun­try in the Caribbean where EX­IM can help sup­port im­pact­ful projects on the ground that im­pact lives and build economies. Whether it is sup­port­ing lo­cal busi­ness, im­port­ing US goods and ser­vices on a small scale, or large trans­for­ma­tion­al in­fra­struc­ture projects, EX­IM, we be­lieve, has the tools to sup­port a wide va­ri­ety of clients across Bar­ba­dos,”  Lewis said.

She said the fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion is ready to ex­ceed the US$500 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion if nec­es­sary.

Prime Min­is­ter Mot­t­ley de­scribed the agree­ment as mu­tu­al­ly ad­van­ta­geous, not­ing its sig­nif­i­cance in ac­cel­er­at­ing na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment goals while cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for Amer­i­can busi­ness­es.

“This rep­re­sents a win-win for both coun­tries. The ar­eas of em­pha­sis—cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty, re­new­able en­er­gy, wa­ter and san­i­ta­tion, and mar­itime do­main aware­ness—are all cen­tral to what Bar­ba­dos must do in or­der to main­tain a healthy in­vest­ment cli­mate for oth­er for­eign in­vest­ment.”

She point­ed to press­ing con­cerns about wa­ter in­fra­struc­ture, link­ing the need for in­vest­ment to cli­mate-re­lat­ed chal­lenges and out­dat­ed sys­tems.

“For every gal­lon of wa­ter you pump, at least half of it [is] go­ing back in­to the earth. That can­not be when ac­cess to wa­ter is al­ready a stress­ful con­cern for us,” Mot­t­ley said, adding that such part­ner­ships are vi­tal to ad­dress­ing these gaps.

On re­new­able en­er­gy, Mot­t­ley re­mained op­ti­mistic about on­go­ing ad­vance­ments in bat­tery stor­age and the an­tic­i­pat­ed im­pact of leg­isla­tive changes like the re­vised Elec­tric Light and Pow­er Act.

BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos, Nov 26, CMC

CMC/sf/ir/2024