Mul­ti­lat­er­al pow­er­hous­es the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank and the World Bank, have start­ed dis­cussing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of join­ing forces to help T&T com­bat its cur­rent eco­nom­ic hard­ships.

This was re­vealed by Therese Turn­er-Jones the IDB’s gen­er­al man­ag­er of the Coun­try De­part­ment Caribbean Group, which over­sees the bank’s op­er­a­tions in sev­er­al ter­ri­to­ries in­clud­ing T&T, dur­ing a we­bi­nar host­ed by the IDB ti­tled “Coro­n­avirus and the Caribbean” which was held via video con­fer­enc­ing app Zoom on Mon­day.

James P Scriv­en, the gen­er­al man­ag­er of IDB In­vest, said the in­sti­tu­tion has US$5 bil­lion avail­able to help mit­i­gate the eco­nom­ic im­pact of the COVID-19 cri­sis.

“It is not ear­marked on­ly to the re­gion but at least US$500 mil­lion of busi­ness that will be ear­marked to the Caribbean,” Scriv­en said.

“In ad­di­tion to that we are cre­at­ing a very spe­cif­ic fa­cil­i­ty that is go­ing to be ap­proved by the board in the next ten days to ear­mark spe­cif­ic ar­eas that are di­rect­ly im­pact­ed in the cri­sis, I am talk­ing about the health sec­tor, I am talk­ing about the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor, I am talk­ing about the farm­ing sec­tor. The sec­tors that can help ad­dress the cur­rent cri­sis that we are go­ing through,” he said.

Turn­er-Jones spoke of the pos­si­ble col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the two ma­jor mul­ti­lat­er­al de­vel­op­ment banks as she re­spond­ed to a ques­tion ask­ing if de­vel­op­ment fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions have been co­op­er­at­ing to help the Caribbean face these try­ing times.

“We are def­i­nite­ly talk­ing and we are co­or­di­nat­ing to the ex­tent that we are al­lowed to, mean­ing be­tween the World Bank and the IDB, for ex­am­ple, we have frame­works that we can work to­geth­er on fi­nanc­ing arrange­ments and yes­ter­day in the con­text of Trinidad I had a ques­tion from the World Bank about can we work to­geth­er on this re­quest from Trinidad,” she said.

“So yes it on­ly makes sense be­cause first of all we are few, the coun­tries are small, their ca­pac­i­ty is con­strained and rather than have many dif­fer­ent or­gan­i­sa­tions trip­ping over each oth­er it is much bet­ter to col­lab­o­rate,” Turn­er-Jones said.

Turn­er-Jones said col­lab­o­ra­tion with­in the re­gion was born out of ne­ces­si­ty.

“I think it’s a good ex­am­ple of in­ter­na­tion­al co-op­er­a­tion and part­ner­ship but that is ba­si­cal­ly out of ne­ces­si­ty we don’t have the lux­u­ry of be­ing able to com­pete against each oth­er or to over­lap on some ar­eas that’s just not an op­tion in the Caribbean,” she said.

Scriv­en said he reg­u­lar­ly meets with the pres­i­dent of the IDB group and op­tions for col­lab­o­ra­tion with oth­er mul­ti­lat­er­als are con­stant­ly re­viewed.

Scriv­en said col­lab­o­ra­tions oc­cur for one rea­son.

“The prob­lems are so big that we need to col­lab­o­rate, there is no rea­son why and we should not be com­pet­ing. On the con­trary. On­ly by adding all of our re­sources the so­lu­tions can be more tai­lor­made to the re­gion,” he said.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert has so far sig­nalled that the gov­ern­ment will need around $9 bil­lion to ad­dress the coun­try’s cur­rent eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion aris­ing out of the dra­mat­ic col­lapse in oil prices, re­duced rev­enue from nat­ur­al gas, and a de­cline in busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty ex­pect­ed as a re­sult of pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures im­ple­ment­ed to cope with COVID-19.

Im­bert said one of the four pos­si­ble op­tions the gov­ern­ment is hop­ing to ex­plore to raise the much-need­ed fund­ing is through the as­sis­tance of­fered by mul­ti­lat­er­al fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions.

Turn­er-Jones said the IDB will al­so be look­ing at as­sist­ing small busi­ness­es.

“Imag­ine you are a small busi­ness in the Caribbean, for the most part, your or­gan­i­sa­tion is go­ing to be bad­ly hit be­cause eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty has come to a grind­ing halt through­out the re­gion so how do we make sure that at the end of this those en­ti­ties are still in some sort of po­si­tion to sur­vive and that would mean pro­vid­ing whether it is guar­an­tees or through de­vel­op­ment banks or through the com­mer­cial banks where we have re­la­tion­ships to pro­vide these cred­it guar­an­tees but al­so to give those small, medi­um en­ter­pris­es some ad­vice on how to go about deal­ing with this cri­sis,” she said.

“This is al­so a mo­ment for all gov­ern­ments in the Caribbean to take a look at how we do busi­ness and how we de­liv­er ser­vices to the gen­er­al pub­lic,” Turn­er-Jones said.

IDB’s gen­er­al man­ag­er of the Coun­try De­part­ment Caribbean Group said she was wor­ried that chil­dren may not be able to ac­cess ed­u­ca­tion be­cause of the clo­sure of schools and the lack of on­line ed­u­ca­tion op­tion in the re­gion, es­pe­cial­ly at pub­lic schools.

Turn­er-Jones said if she had to grade the re­gion in terms of our readi­ness to im­ple­ment on­line ser­vices and op­er­ate in a vir­tu­al space we would get a five.

“In my few decades as an econ­o­mist, I cer­tain­ly have nev­er seen any­thing quite like what we are wit­ness­ing to­day it is one of the most com­plex eco­nom­ic sce­nar­ios in the last hun­dred years both glob­al­ly and re­gion­al­ly,” David Rosen­blatt the IDB’s re­gion­al ad­vis­er stat­ed.

Rosen­blatt said to stop the dis­ease would re­quire large seg­ments of economies not op­er­at­ing.

“This is not on­ly go­ing to be a fi­nan­cial and eco­nom­ic cri­sis it is al­so go­ing to be a health cri­sis, but a men­tal health cri­sis peo­ple are not used to what we are go­ing though, be­ing con­fined to their own hous­es day and night in to­tal lock-down so I do think that psy­cho­log­i­cal and meant health is­sues are go­ing to rise and for all in­tents and pur­pos­es I think the Caribbean can play a big heal­ing role to the world specif­i­cal­ly through tourism,” he said.

Turn­er-Jones said the time now calls for cre­ativ­i­ty from all sec­tors as it can­not be busi­ness as usu­al.

Mon­day’s we­bi­nar was host­ed by Gol­da Lee-Bruce and last­ed for an hour.

There were over 500 at­ten­dees.