Minister for Economy, Aiyaz Sayed‑Khaiyum says there is no Pacific Island Country Financial Institution that has been certified to be a recognised agency to receive climate funds at the moment.
While speaking at the Pacific Finance Ministers Meeting, Sayed‑Khaiyum said that accessing climate finance is not easy but it is bureaucratic.
He says a lot of capacity building is required in particular for the officials to get access to these funds.
Sayed‑Khaiyum says the issues that need to be discussed are the processing of grants, concession loans that we get from organisations like the World Bank and ADB.
He says lots of assessments are fundamental based on gross national income per capita.
Sayed‑Khaiyum says if we have a particular threshold we do not get the grant and the concessionary loans.
He says we have an economy that is fundamentally prone to lots of vulnerabilities such as climate change and our economic base is not very broad.
Sayed‑Khaiyum says they are proposing whether they should approach the multilateral agencies and talk about some other core index when they are going to consider concessionary loans.
