Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor of the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank Robert Le Hunte be­lieves that T&T’s long-stand­ing wa­ter de­liv­ery prob­lems can be prop­er­ly ad­dressed once and for all fol­low­ing a US$315 mil­lion loan to this coun­try.

Le Hunte on Mon­day met with Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les and Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Pen­ne­lope Beck­les to dis­cuss the progress and ex­e­cu­tion of the loan to trans­form the op­er­a­tion of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA).

Le Hunte said the fact that both he and Beck­les pre­vi­ous­ly held the Pub­lic Util­i­ties port­fo­lio should not be tak­en for grant­ed.

“The fact that we have three min­is­ters of Pub­lic Util­i­ties all lined up work­ing in very im­por­tant as­pects at­tempt­ing to ad­dress this long out­stand­ing burn­ing is­sue which would have been a pri­or­i­ty in all of our times I think this is a good thing for the coun­try so at least we get a very fo­cused ap­proach and hope­ful­ly we would be able to, with the mon­ey, now that mon­ey is avail­able it is now about ex­e­cu­tion,” Le Hunte said.

Le Hunte said the IDB con­tin­ues to be the ma­jor de­vel­op­ment fi­nanc­ing in­sti­tu­tion for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean and its fo­cus is about im­prov­ing the lives of the peo­ple of the re­gion.

“The board it­self was very at­tract­ed to this par­tic­u­lar project and we are glad that we were able to pro­vide the as­sis­tance,” Le Hunte said.

The way the over­all US$315 mil­lion loan is struc­tured it will be drawn down in dif­fer­ent phas­es.

The first phase val­ued at US$80 mil­lion is aimed at boost­ing 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 Pro­gram, this ini­tial op­er­a­tion will in­clude in­sti­tu­tion­al strength­en­ing and ca­pac­i­ty build­ing to help the coun­try’s Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties and its ex­e­cut­ing agency, WASA, im­prove their gov­er­nance and sus­tain­able man­age­ment of wa­ter re­sources.

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.

Le Hunte said Mon­day’s meet­ing was aimed at en­sur­ing the nec­es­sary ad­min­is­tra­tive as­pects are put in place to en­sure for a smooth ex­e­cu­tion of the loan.

“Com­ing out of the meet­ing I was very sat­is­fied with the dif­fer­ent as­sur­ances and the com­mit­ments, we are al­so ready once the min­is­ter is able to start to look at the sec­ond phase so the dif­fer­ent phas­es of the loan can run in par­al­lel be­cause we ap­pre­ci­ate the im­por­tance of im­prov­ing the wa­ter sup­ply to the widest dis­tri­b­u­tion of peo­ple as pos­si­ble,” Le Hunte said.

The loan will be dis­bursed over the course of 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.