The In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) Wedes­day said it has ap­proved a US$90 mil­lion Con­di­tion­al Cred­it Line for In­vest­ment Projects, which in­cludes a first in­di­vid­ual loan of US$42 mil­lion, to fa­cil­i­tate the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go by sup­port­ing the ex­pan­sion and en­hance­ment of the dig­i­tal econ­o­my.

The IDB said the Con­di­tion­al Cred­it Line for In­vest­ment Projects con­sists of up to three in­di­vid­ual and se­quen­tial loans over the course of 10 years.

It said the first loan is de­signed to boost pro­duc­tiv­i­ty through in­clu­sive and safe dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy adop­tion and in­no­va­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“It will de­liv­er sim­pli­fied and in­clu­sive pub­lic ser­vices us­ing dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies, in­crease the dig­i­tal ca­pa­bil­i­ties of the na­tion­al work­force and firms, and strength­en the gov­ern­ment’s abil­i­ty to pro­tect against and re­spond to cy­ber­at­tacks,” the IDB said.

The Wash­ing­ton-based fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion said that the pro­gramme has three com­po­nents. The first will im­prove the in­sti­tu­tion­al frame­work for dig­i­tal in­no­va­tion by de­vel­op­ing the state’s ca­pac­i­ty to de­sign and im­ple­ment dig­i­tal strate­gies at the na­tion­al lev­el and im­prove cit­i­zen-fac­ing dig­i­tal ser­vice de­liv­ery with­in key gov­ern­ment agen­cies.

The sec­ond will ac­cel­er­ate growth of the dig­i­tal econ­o­my through the strength­en­ing of ac­tors cen­tral to the dig­i­tal in­no­va­tion ecosys­tem such as train­ing providers, firms and en­tre­pre­neurs. The third will strength­en na­tion­al cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty ca­pa­bil­i­ties by fi­nanc­ing the mod­ern­iza­tion of cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty pub­lic pol­i­cy, reg­u­la­tions, stan­dards and pro­to­cols, among oth­er ac­tions.

The IDB said cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go will ben­e­fit from pol­i­cy changes im­ple­ment­ed through this pro­gram. Se­lect­ed gov­ern­ment agen­cies will re­ceive in­sti­tu­tion­al strength­en­ing sup­port to ad­vance their use of da­ta in­ter­op­er­abil­i­ty plat­forms and cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty man­age­ment. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, over 150 firms will re­ceive sup­port to use dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy to im­prove their pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and more than 500 pub­lic ser­vants will have ac­cess to ad­vanced train­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties in dig­i­tal ser­vice de­liv­ery and project man­age­ment.

The pro­gramme will al­so fea­ture ac­tiv­i­ties that pro­mote the dig­i­tal in­clu­sion of per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties and women-led firms.

The bank said that the ex­pect­ed re­sults of this pro­gramme will yield re­duc­tions in the time tak­en to com­plete a trans­ac­tion with the gov­ern­ment, im­proved pro­duc­tiv­i­ty among em­ploy­ees of ben­e­fi­cia­ry firms and greater proac­tive and re­ac­tive re­spons­es to cy­berthreats against the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor.

This first in­di­vid­ual loan of US$42 mil­lion has a 15.25-year re­pay­ment term, a 5.5-year grace pe­ri­od, and an in­ter­est rate based on the Se­cured Overnight Fi­nanc­ing Rate (SOFR.), the IDB said.

WASH­ING­TON, Dec 13, CMC