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Add to Preferred SourcesInter-American Development Bank (IDB) president Mauricio Claver-Carone convened a virtual meeting on November 20th with leaders and ministers of Belize, Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, along with World Bank Group president David Malpass and Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI) president Dante Mossi, to update the action plan for helping these countries to deal with the impacts of hurricanes Eta and Iota.
Following the landfall in Central America of a second hurricane in less than two weeks, the IDB has expanded its assistance to the affected countries, in close coordination with multiple national and international authorities.
“The IDB is totally committed to helping with the recovery and reconstruction of affected countries in Central America,” said Claver-Carone. “The IDB will lead a historic cooperation effort between governments, multilaterals, and the private sector to accelerate the recovery and reconstruction of the region.”
The IDB’s response began immediately following Hurricane Eta and has been expanded in light of the damages caused by Hurricane Iota. In coordination with national authorities, United Nations agencies, the World Bank Group, and CABEI, the IDB is advancing a joint action plan to finance humanitarian assistance and reconstruction works in Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua, the most severely affected countries. In Panama, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Belize, the plan will finance measures to rehabilitate affected infrastructure.
President Caver-Carone announced the creation of a task force to coordinate actions on the ground with governments and aid agencies, attend to immediate needs, support the development of recovery plans and, eventually, carry out resilient reconstruction efforts in each country.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Hurricane Eta affected nearly three million people in the seven Central American countries, causing up to $5.5 billion in preliminary estimates of economic damages. To this must be added the impact of Hurricane Iota, which has still not been determined.
The IDB will support resilient reconstruction in the most affected countries with new resources of up to $1.2 billion, as much as $500 million in reassigned resources from existing operations, and the mobilization of resources from other institutions that work in the region.
Original source: IDB