Grena­da has writ­ten to fi­nan­cial agen­cies and mul­ti­lat­er­al part­ners re­quest­ing that the debt pay­ment sus­pen­sion clause in sev­er­al loan agree­ments be trig­gered be­cause of the dev­as­ta­tion on the coun­try by Hur­ri­cane Beryl ear­li­er this week.

In 2022, the na­tion­al debt of Grena­da amount­ed to an es­ti­mat­ed US$0.77 bil­lion.

“The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance has al­ready writ­ten to some of our mul­ti­lat­er­al part­ners to in­di­cate to them that this cat­a­stroph­ic event has hap­pened and to trig­ger our debt sus­pen­sion clause in some of these agree­ments,” Prime Min­is­ter Dick­on Mitchell told a news con­fer­ence.

Fol­low­ing the pas­sage of Hur­ri­cane Ivan in 2004, then prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Mitchell had ad­vo­cat­ed and suc­cess­ful­ly cam­paigned for a debt sus­pen­sion to be in­clud­ed in all new loan agree­ments.

The clause is trig­gered when­ev­er the coun­try is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing haz­ards from nat­ur­al dis­as­ters such as hur­ri­canes, earth­quakes or a health pan­dem­ic. The last time Grena­da re­quest­ed a trig­ger­ing of that clause was in 2020 when COVID-19 was de­clared a pan­dem­ic.

Prime Min­is­ter Mitchell said that the pas­sage of hur­ri­cane Beryl is hav­ing both fis­cal and so­cial im­pacts on the econ­o­my and right now the coun­try will need sig­nif­i­cant re­sources.

He told re­porters that the clean up ex­er­cise alone will run in­to the “tens of mil­lions of dol­lars,” while an­nounc­ing there will be a na­tion­al clean up on the week­end.

Mitchell ac­knowl­edged that “it is go­ing to be a mam­moth task to re­build Grena­da, Car­ri­a­cou and Pe­tite Mar­tinique”.

He said that the Cab­i­net dur­ing an emer­gency meet­ing on Tue­day evening had agreed to es­tab­lish sev­er­al task forces to as­sess the dam­ages and the im­pact the cat­e­go­ry four hur­ri­cane has had on the coun­try.

“We have agreed to cre­ate a task force to treat with this sig­nif­i­cant cat­a­stroph­ic event this will have on the 2024 bud­get, the econ­o­my and the cur­rent fis­cal sit­u­a­tion.

“We are go­ing to cre­ate a task force to deal with co­or­di­nat­ing re­lief ef­forts in con­junc­tion with NaD­MA (Na­tion­al Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Agency) as it re­lates to our for­eign part­ners,” said Prime Min­is­ter Mitchell, who is al­so re­spon­si­ble for Na­tion­al Dis­as­ter and chair of the Na­tion­al Emer­gency Ad­vi­so­ry Coun­cil.

“The Cab­i­net al­so agreed to es­tab­lish a task force to do a de­tailed as­sess­ment of the loss and dam­age to know how much the is­land has suf­fered in the area of agri­cul­ture, fish­ing, hous­ing, pub­lic build­ings, pri­vate build­ings, pub­lic in­fra­struc­ture and the en­vi­ron­ment as a re­sult of hur­ri­cane Beryl,” he said.

“I want to stress that the en­vi­ron­ment has tak­en a se­vere bat­ter­ing as a re­sult of this hur­ri­cane, not just the built in­fra­struc­ture, we need to make sure that we record ac­cu­rate­ly the loss, the dam­age and that we are able to quan­ti­fy this be­cause it has sig­nif­i­cant im­pli­ca­tions for the econ­o­my of Grena­da, for the gov­ern­ment’s fis­cal sit­u­a­tion and for some of our con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tions, li­a­bil­i­ties as well as ben­e­fits,” Mitchell added.