Seychelles can now access contingent line of credit for disasters |09 March 2015

Seychelles can now access funds from a US $7 million contingent line of credit for immediate relief in the event that a national emergency is declared after a disaster.

Funds in the Catastrophe Deferred Drawdown Option (Cat DDO) will be available through a loan from the World Bank.
The main objective of the Cat DDO is to secure a country’s budget balance through the immediate availability of liquidity during natural disasters.
This would help reduce the impact of the disasters on  affected people.

The line of credit will provide DDO as liquidity support for the government in the case of a natural disaster.

Preparations to put in place the necessary structure and facilities for Seychelles to access the loan started last year with the Ministry of Finance and Division of Risk and Disaster Management (DRDM) and became effective end of December last year but to date no drawdown has been made as there has been no disasters and therefore  no state of emergency declared.

A senior disaster risk management specialist from the World Bank Group in Washington, Doekle Wielinga, is in the country since March 4 to help DRDM finalise  its loan policy to bring it in line with the required norms.

Mr Wielinga also held talks with the Minister for Finance, Trade and The Blue Economy  and the Minister for Environment and Climate Change.
On Friday he met again with the management of DRDM and the principal secretary for Finance Patrick Payet to finalise details of the policy.

“Once a national emergency has been declared the Ministry of Finance will be able to withdraw from the contingent line of credit the amount of funds it would deem necessary to address the emergency,” Mr Wielinga said.

Mr Wielinga also pointed out that having such a project in place will also help strengthen the disaster risk management framework.

Meanwhile the director general of DRDM, Paul Labaleine, has said the DRDM and the Ministry of Finance are working on various targets to continue to strengthen the country’s risk  and disaster management programme.