CAF pledges USD 100 million for Manabí and Esmeraldas provinces

CAF—development bank of Latin America—approved a USD 100 million loan for Ecuador to develop social infrastructure that is set to improve basic services in towns hit by the 2016 earthquake, in the provinces of Esmeraldas and Manabí. The funds will also support the implementation of the Reconstruction and Productive Reactivation Plan and will help strengthen the Ministry of Transport and Public Works (MTOP) (the loan executing agency), in coordination with the decentralized autonomous governments (GADs).

The loan is expected to have positive social, economic and environmental impacts by creating jobs, providing stable public services, meeting current and future demand for drinking water and sanitation in the provinces of Esmeraldas and Manabí, which are areas with major social and economic vulnerability, including high levels of poverty and rurality.

“This loan adds to the Ecuadorian government’s efforts to restore infrastructure in the two provinces hit hardest by the 2016 earthquake and to thereby improve the availability of quality public services to improve living conditions for the most vulnerable groups,” said CAF Executive President Sergio Díaz-Granados.

The Manabí and Esmeraldas Reconstruction Support Program is structured into three components: 1) restitution of public utilities by constructing municipal public buildings in Pedernales and El Carmen; 2) providing water, sewerage and urban regeneration in the cities of Chone, San Vicente, Pedernales and Esmeraldas; and 3) Strengthening and managing the program to perform audits, consultancies, studies, reviews, and the unit in charge of follow-up and monitoring.

In the last five years (2017–2021), CAF approved operations for Ecuador for USD 4.62 billion, an average of USD 926 million per year, equivalent to 7% of the total approved by CAF in that period. Total disbursements amounted to USD 3.53 billion in the same period, for an annual average of USD 706 million.