The Unit­ed States Agency for In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment Re­gion­al Of­fice to the East­ern and South­ern Caribbean (US­AID/ESC) and ANSA Mer­chant Bank Lim­it­ed (AM­BL) have signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU) un­der the ban­ner, “Pro­mot­ing Pri­vate Sec­tor-Led Sus­tain­abil­i­ty and Re­silience of the En­vi­ron­ment.”

The pur­pose of the MOU is to com­bine the ef­forts of both en­ti­ties to achieve mu­tu­al goals of eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment and cli­mate fi­nanc­ing chal­lenges of the Caribbean re­gion, with a par­tic­u­lar fo­cus on na­ture. To­geth­er, US­AID and AM­BL hope to in­ten­si­fy pri­vate sec­tor en­gage­ment to achieve bet­ter, mea­sur­able out­comes.

This first-of-its-kind pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship be­tween US­AID/ESC and a fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion, will fo­cus on the fol­low­ing com­mon strate­gic goals and ob­jec­tives:

● To fos­ter sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic growth and de­vel­op­ment, es­pe­cial­ly among mi­cro-, small-, and medi­um-sized busi­ness­es

● To cre­ate and en­able busi­ness en­vi­ron­ments for sus­tain­able green and blue eco­nom­ic growth, es­pe­cial­ly with­in cli­mate-vul­ner­a­ble sec­tors such as agri­cul­ture, tourism and en­er­gy

● To in­crease the flow of cap­i­tal to­wards nat­ur­al cli­mate so­lu­tions, na­ture-based so­lu­tions, just en­er­gy tran­si­tion, and eq­ui­table cli­mate re­silience

● To im­prove the re­silience of Caribbean com­mu­ni­ties, or­ga­ni­za­tions, and busi­ness­es to over­come or re­cov­er from eco­nom­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal and po­lit­i­cal shocks as well as nat­ur­al dis­as­ters

To fos­ter part­ner­ships and col­lab­o­ra­tions to­wards broad­er sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment out­comes

US Am­bas­sador to T&T Can­dace Bond said at the sign­ing, “The Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing be­tween the Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment, through US­AID, and ANSA Mer­chant Bank Lim­it­ed ad­vances PACC 2030’s fo­cus on food se­cu­ri­ty and en­hanc­ing the lo­cal ca­pac­i­ty for cli­mate adap­ta­tion and re­silience, and deep­ens col­lab­o­ra­tion with our Caribbean part­ners. Fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions play a crit­i­cal role in redi­rect­ing cap­i­tal and demon­strat­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ties, risks, and fi­nan­cial ben­e­fits of in­vest­ing in blue and green eco­nom­ic growth.”

Mean­while, Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of ANSA Mer­chant Bank Lim­it­ed, Ian De Souza, re­marked, “In the Caribbean, we and our clients are con­front­ed dai­ly with the ev­i­dence that sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment and nat­ur­al cap­i­tal are in­sep­a­ra­ble. With the an­tic­i­pat­ed es­ca­la­tion of cli­mate change im­pacts across the re­gion, and the in­her­ent fragili­ty of our economies and so­ci­eties, ne­glect­ing the pro­tec­tion and restora­tion of Na­ture will have dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences. The ob­jec­tives out­lined in our Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing with US­AID align seam­less­ly with our com­mit­ment to nat­ur­al cap­i­tal and re­spon­si­ble busi­ness prac­tices with­in ANSA Mer­chant Bank’s En­vi­ron­men­tal, So­cial, and Gov­er­nance (ESG) frame­work.”