Soft funding for COVID care centre

A 20-year soft loan has been granted Barbados to cover the cost of refurbishing and re-purposing Harrison’s Point and buy equipment to outfit it as a coronavirus hospital, Prime Minister Mottley has revealed.

Though she did not disclose the amount, she described the loan as “decent and good funding” that has a two-decade-long repayment schedule.

She told the House of Assembly: “There is a four-year moratorium on the loan and then the rate of interest is 1.25 per cent, which is extraordinarily concessional and the loan is over 20 years with that four-year moratorium… rather than having to absorb all this fiscal year.”

Mottley explained that she received the news Tuesday morning from the head of the negotiating team, Minister of Economic Affairs and Investment Marsha Caddle, that the European Investment Bank had granted the loan.  Most of the concessionary repayment conditions were thanks to the work of former EU Ambassador Daniella Tramacere, she said.

“She went out of her way to meet with me and to trigger our interest in being able to spread out that loan over a period of time,” the PM said.

“It takes the pressure off of us with respect to paying for that building,” Mottley said in thanking the bank, noting that the financial arrangement is expected to be signed early next year.

Converting the former US Naval Facility at Harrison’s Point into an intensive care unit for COVID-19 marks a third re-purposing in the last 30 years, with the first being for the Barbados Youth Service, then to a temporary prison location when the Glendairy Prison was burned.

Mottley explained the ICU facility was furnished with 78 beds among other equipment and, “within less than a month we had a hospital functioning with equipment, expanding for the first time in decades this country’s primary ICU capacity to more beds than we have at the QEH”. (GA)