U.S. announces US$10M support for Caribbean ports

The Unit­ed States has an­nounced a US$10 mil­lion ini­tia­tive to sup­port re­silient port in­fra­struc­ture across the Caribbean, as part of ef­forts to deep­en eco­nom­ic en­gage­ment and safe­guard crit­i­cal re­gion­al as­sets.

The fund­ing, to be de­liv­ered through the Caribbean Basin Se­cu­ri­ty Ini­tia­tive, was dis­closed dur­ing a round­table host­ed by the US De­part­ment of State with Amer­i­can mar­itime in­dus­try lead­ers and Caribbean port au­thor­i­ties on Mon­day.

A state­ment by the US State De­part­ment did not name the coun­tries in­volved in the dis­cus­sions.

It said the dis­cus­sions fo­cused on ex­pand­ing US pri­vate sec­tor in­vest­ment and iden­ti­fy­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties to strength­en port in­fra­struc­ture, trade and tourism across the re­gion, while main­tain­ing eth­i­cal and trans­par­ent busi­ness prac­tices.

Ac­cord­ing to the state­ment, the en­gage­ment forms part of Wash­ing­ton’s broad­er push to ad­vance com­mer­cial diplo­ma­cy and re­in­force high-qual­i­ty in­fra­struc­ture de­vel­op­ment with­in the Caribbean port sec­tor.

Of­fi­cials said the ini­tia­tive is in­tend­ed to en­hance re­silience in crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture, while sup­port­ing eco­nom­ic growth and im­prov­ing re­gion­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty.

The Unit­ed States al­so sig­nalled its in­ten­tion to con­tin­ue work­ing close­ly with Caribbean part­ners to strength­en eco­nom­ic ties and ad­vance shared de­vel­op­ment pri­or­i­ties across the re­gion.