THE Asian Development Bank has made a $US350 million ($F719m) loan available to the Fijian Government over the five years from 2016 to 2020.
This, according to ADB, is entirely up to the Fijian Government how much of the loan it wanted to use.
The bank said it would seek to mobilise co-financing from other partners.
“ADB offers relatively cheap loans for Fiji. ADB is a multilateral development bank made up of member countries including Fiji. As such, the price of finance Fiji can get through ADB is cheaper than borrowing directly from the market,” said Robert Jauncey, ADB’s regional director for the South Pacific Sub-Regional Office.
His comments come after ADB revealed it would provide about $US2.5 billion ($F5b) in loans and grants to 14 countries in the Pacific region from 2016-2020.
“Part of our job is to help the Government put together the best possible financing package for projects.
“So we also try to mobilise grants and other cheap financing from partners. One example is how ADB helped Fiji to get $US31m ($F63m) in grant funds from the Green Climate Fund for water and sanitation investments in Fiji.”
Mr Jauncey says ADB’s program in Fiji is especially helping the Government to improve transport links for the people and to improve water and sanitation services in the greater Suva area.
“The Green Climate Fund grant for the Suva water project will be used to move the water intake upstream to respond to increasing salt water intrusion as a result of climate change.
“Other financing from the Government, ADB, and the European Investment Bank will be used to improve water and sewerage treatment and to expand the network to another 10,000 households.”
For Fiji, he said, ADB’s interest rate was 1.4 per cent for US dollar loans with a maturity of 20 years.
ADB has provided Fiji with $US420m ($F863.48m) in loans, $US2m ($F4.11m) in grants, and $US32m ($F65.79m) in technical assistance since they started working together in 1970.
Attorney-General and Minister for Economy Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum said with multilateral and finance agencies making funds available, it was up to the sovereign State to decide when they wanted to utilise those funds.
“Just because you have a particular fund allocated to the State does not mean that the only mean is to take it up,” Mr Sayed-Khaiyum said.
“It has to look at key priority areas, whether it has the capacities to actually use up those funds within a particular period of time.”
