The In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) has ap­proved an US$80 mil­lion (TT$544 mil­lion) loan to boost the ef­fi­cien­cy, qual­i­ty, sus­tain­abil­i­ty, and re­silience of T&T’s drink­ing wa­ter sup­ply and wa­ter se­cu­ri­ty.

As part of a US$315 mil­lion con­di­tion­al cred­it line for the T&T Na­tion­al Wa­ter Sec­tor Trans­for­ma­tion Pro­gramme, this ini­tial op­er­a­tion will in­clude in­sti­tu­tion­al strength­en­ing and ca­pac­i­ty build­ing to help the coun­try’s Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties and its ex­e­cut­ing agency, the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), im­prove their gov­er­nance and sus­tain­able man­age­ment of wa­ter re­sources, the IDB said in a state­ment.

It ex­plained the pro­gramme will di­rect­ly ben­e­fit an es­ti­mat­ed 1,025,000 res­i­dents (310,665 house­holds), plus an ad­di­tion­al 279,500 res­i­dents (84,705 house­holds) in sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 16,841 busi­ness, agri­cul­tur­al, and in­dus­tri­al cus­tomers and char­i­ta­ble in­sti­tu­tions in dif­fer­ent sup­ply ar­eas will ben­e­fit as well.

The pro­gramme will al­so sup­port WASA’s op­er­a­tional, com­mer­cial, and tech­ni­cal man­age­ment by pro­vid­ing ac­cess to in­no­v­a­tive dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion tools and tech­nolo­gies and da­ta-dri­ven man­age­ment sys­tems.

Ac­cord­ing to the IDB, WASA’s ser­vices will be up­grad­ed through net­work re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and op­ti­mi­sa­tion, or­gan­i­sa­tion­al de­vel­op­ment and ca­pac­i­ty build­ing, in­te­grat­ed wa­ter re­sources man­age­ment, cli­mate change and nat­ur­al dis­as­ter risk man­age­ment, and lever­ag­ing the IDB’s ex­pe­ri­ence in wa­ter loss re­duc­tion projects.

All of these ac­tions promise to low­er the agency’s op­er­at­ing costs and sub­si­dies.

The pro­gramme is al­so aligned with the IDB group’s coun­try strat­e­gy 2021/2025 for T&T , specif­i­cal­ly the strate­gic ob­jec­tive of op­ti­miz­ing dig­i­tal ser­vice de­liv­ery by digi­tis­ing op­er­a­tional process­es and adopt­ing smart tech­nol­o­gy for wa­ter in­fra­struc­ture and re­lat­ed in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nolo­gies.

The loan will be dis­bursed over four years, with a 25-year re­pay­ment term, a 5.5-year grace pe­ri­od, and an in­ter­est rate based on the Se­cured Overnight Fi­nanc­ing Rate.