Another of the Belize delegation's focuses for concessionary loans is the International Development Association. They offer concessionary financing to support climate resiliency building, contingency-based crisis financing for recovery from extreme climate events as well as long-term economic resiliency building.
The only thing is Belize does not qualify because it is not a nation state. Coye explained how they again sought an exception for this:
Chris Coye, Min. of State, Ministry of Finance
"Principally, the criteria to meet that exception is vulnerability in debt and vulnerability in climate. So Belize not having even really any external commercial debt clearly has fragility in terms of access to debt on the external commercial markets."
"So we meet that criteria. In fact, the World Bank management thinks in their view that we fully meet the criteria of both debt and obviously climate vulnerability. Belize is ranked 8 out of 167 countries as far as climate risk is concerned."
"I think we have a risk of a hurricane, a 46.6% risk of a hurricane every year on a debt standpoint. So we meet the criteria. The only reason we don't have access through that exemption is because we are not an island as simple as that sounds."
"We have many islands and we're a coast, a lowline coastal state, but the mainland is not surrounded by water. So simply because of that, we are not eligible under that exception for IDA resources. So notwithstanding that and thankfully with the support of the World Bank management, we have submitted an application for eligibility."
"Essential. we are asking the IDA and their deputies to change their rules, to broaden it slightly to make us eligible. I can't say that we're optimistic of a success on it in December, but certainly we're optimistic that we will gain access to concessionary finance in the near future on the basis of the vulnerabilities that we are subject to."
