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IDB provides more development assistance to Guyana than any other partner …Averages US$45M in annual approvals
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has long been the dominant development partner in Guyana. Since 2000, the IDB has provided more development assistance to Guyana than any other partner, averaging US$45 million in annual approvals.
Though infrastructure has been the primary focus of the Bank’s assistance from 2012 to 2016, it noted in one of its most comprehensive reports that it has provided significant support in the social sectors in the early 2000s and, more recently, for natural resource management.
Further to this, the Inter-American Development Bank noted that it had developed a 2012-2016 Guyana Country Strategy (CS), which proposed four priority areas and a smaller lending envelope than one of its previous CS period.
The four “priority areas” were sustainable energy, natural resource management, private sector development, and public sector management.
The CS also included three “areas for continued strategic dialogue”: water and sanitation, transport, and citizen security. The Bank noted that the Amerindian communities’ needs would be addressed as a “cross-cutting theme.”
The CS proposed a lending envelope between US$82 million and US$103 million, much less than the US$187 million approved in the previous CS period.
Although the CS objectives were aligned with Guyana’s policy priorities and development challenges, the implemented programme was relevant only in some sectors. The CS was consistent with the goals that the Government of Guyana articulated in its Low Carbon Development Strategy.
The Bank noted that an important part of the Government’s development strategy was an agreement with the Government of Norway to finance a mechanism (known as the GRIF) for results-based payments for forest climate services of up to US$250 million by 2015.
The IDB said that its programmes in natural resource management and sustainable energy included multiple operations whose objectives were clearly aligned to the CS objectives.
However, IDB’s programmes in private sector development and public sector management were not closely aligned with the CS objectives and expected outcomes. Although not prioritized in the CS, the Bank has been engaged for decades in water and in sanitation and transport, and these programmes were aligned with the country’s development challenges. Also, the strategy did not identify the low institutional capacity of the public sector as a risk to the programme.
OTHERS
The IDB noted that the European Union, the United States, and Norway have also been important partners, though at a lower level when a comparison is made to the Bank.
It also pointed out that the World Bank Group and the Caribbean Development Bank have provided significantly less assistance and have focused their support on health, education, governance, and disaster risk management. (KIANA WILBURG)
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