 Hello and welcome to this very special edition of TV30, I'm your host, Jolene Bisse Joseph. The European Investment Bank have made their first visit to the Caribbean, leading a high level delegation, EIB Vice President Ricardo Felix, is in the region discussing financial opportunities for Barbados and Saint Lucia. And here to give us some further insight into the visit is the Vice President himself, Mr Ricardo Felix. So thank you for joining us here today, Mr Felix. Thank you very much, it's a great pleasure to be here with you. Okay, now in my opening statement, I said that you're actually leading a high level delegation rather. Tell us a little bit about the high level delegation that you're actually going to be here with. Well, it's my first visit as the Vice President of the EIB to the Caribbean and we decided to start by Saint Lucia because it's very important for us what we have just signed with the government at the healthcare loan. I'm coming here with the head of division for Latin America and the Caribbean with the loan officers involved and with the team that is the team that is dealing with the financial opportunities and with the operations with the Latin America and the Caribbean and in particular in this case with the Caribbean region with Saint Lucia, Barbados and other Caribbean islands. So we are prepared to discuss and that's what we did with the Prime Minister, Philippe Gépierre, about future opportunities. Okay, now you discussed about the loan in regards to the healthcare sector in Saint Lucia. Can you give us a little bit more insight into that? Well, it's an important loan, it's 14 million euros for supporting Saint Lucia healthcare system in dealing with the COVID pandemic which affected pretty much all the world economies but in particular small economy like Saint Lucia that relies on tourism and on services and this sector was pretty much affected by the COVID pandemic. So this 14 million loan is devoted to improve the healthcare system, to prepare the healthcare system to deal with the COVID that unfortunately is not yet behind us but also with the future healthcare challenges that will come and European values of freedom, democracy and solidarity need to be materialized and this is a materialization of these values in this case with Saint Lucia because democracy and freedom implies that people have their basic health insured by a universal system that allows people to work and to have their lives and this is a big step forward in terms of improving people's lives but also in terms of improving the productivity of this economy. Okay, now some of the literature was actually given about the European Investment Bank, it actually stated how promoting sustainable development is actually in the Caribbean is something that you guys really take to heart. Tell us a little bit about that. The European Investment Bank has become the EU climate bank. So years ago, we started long ago in fact we started back in 2008 with the green bonds which were the first financial asset for which proceeds are fully devoted to in fact the fight climate change but since 2019 with the climate bank roadmap we put a lot of effort on mitigation meaning replacing fossil fuels, by renewable energy sources, investing in energy efficiency, investing in R&D, new forms of energy and energy conservation on the one hand but the climate change is there and the impacts are there and the Caribbean islands is suffering this pretty much without being an issuer of greenhouse gases so the other part is adaptation which means adapting our infrastructures to climate change impacts that are already materializing. We need to do both, we need to avoid that climate change moves fast and destroys in fact our livelihoods but at the same time we need to deal with the existing impacts and these existing impacts are materializing in this region of the globe to a large extent and we are more than happy to continue working with the Santa Lucia and with the Caribbean to make resilient infrastructures prepared to deal with these extreme weather events that are coming more frequently. That's a great thing, a great initiative because I mean as you said the whole thing about SID small island development states and this is something that's very dear to our hearts yeah because we know that the effect that is happening here that's happening here so is that one of the reasons for example why EIB Global was actually developed as well so that you could reach out to these smaller islands and such likes? Yeah, EIB Global was created in fact to organize our activities towards outside you in a more efficient manner, more devoting the resources, devoting the people that is experienced and doing more outside you such that we get closer to the outside you populations, to the small islands development states. This is very important to have teams fully dedicated to you that understand what are the needs, what are the institutional framework, what are these economies based on such that you can deliver faster and more efficiently. That's why we created EIB Global to have a branch fully devoted to the issues, problems and the needs of the populations outside you in particular Caribbean. Okay all right now I know that the visit is supposed to be how many days, four days I believe? Four days. Right so why are you expected to get done, why are you hoping to get done within those four days? Well in these four days I'll be contacting, well I contacted today I met Philippe Shapierre the prime minister, I'm moving to Barbados, in Barbados we'll have a contact with also the government of Barbados but to have the EU CARICOM forum which will be a great opportunity to meet many of the leaders and of members of government of the Caribbean islands such that we can put forward and convey our message under our two new regional programs. One devoted to clean water and clean oceans and the other one devoted to the green and inclusive recovery. They target different types of issues, one devoted to manage the water supply systems, the storm water drainage systems such that we can keep the pollution before it comes into the ocean and keep the oceans clean so that's one program, the other one is related precisely with doing the green transition in an inclusive manner, leaving no one behind putting the people and the citizens first. Okay brilliant, can we expect you in that case to be coming back to the Caribbean again soon? I'll be more than happy to come very soon to sign more deals with the Caribbean governments, with the others and I think there's a lot we can do in the region and we are more than happy to work so I'll be more than happy to back soon to keep moving and signing more loans and more commitments to support the development of the Caribbean. Okay well this is honestly a great thing I know you don't have much time but is there anything you'd like to add because to me this is a great opportunity for you to actually say some stuff to the people out there that's actually the audience of NTN because before you actually came I didn't even really know that much about the European Investment Bank and such likes so what can you tell us that so we know a little bit more about you? Well the European Investment Bank is the biggest multilateral development bank so we do close to 60-65 billion euros per year of funding, 90% of this in the European Union but 10% outside EU so this means that we are doing something like seven, eight, nine and we want to grow our funding outside EU to a level that can be in the region of nine to ten billion euros per year it's a quite a substantial amount of money and what I'd like to convey to the Caribbean authorities is that part of this can be used in the benefit of your populations benefiting from lower interest rate costs benefiting from longer ten or longer maturities of the loans such that it doesn't put so much pressure in your public finances but also technical assistance which means that we want also to use the grants from the European Union and we work side by side with the European Commission to get the best projects, projects that follow the best practices and that are good enough so that improve people's lives the most we can our aim is impact, impacting people's lives in the positive direction. Well Mr Felix thank you so much for joining us today that's absolutely fantastic it was a pleasure having you here today. My pleasure thank you very much. Thank you very much and thank you for joining us here at this TV 30 special however right now it's time for me to say goodbye. Bye bye.