$1.2B of Norway funds cleared for Amerindian fund

Minister of Finance Dr. Ashni Singh and United Nations Resident Representative Khadija Musa exchange documents after signing off on the GRIF in the presence of President Donald Ramotar, Prime Minister Samuel Hinds, former Chairperson of the National Toshaos Council (NTC) Yvonne Pearson and incumbent NTC Chairman Derrick John. (GINA photo)

The government and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on Thursday signed a pact that will see an initial $360M of $1.2B being released for projects by Amerindian communities.

The UNDP is the partner entity for the Amerindian Development Fund (ADF) and in June, the Steering Committee of the Guyana REDD+ Investment Fund (GRIF) approved the Project Concept Note (PCN) for the fund enabling the UNDP to request up to US$1.8M ($360M) for project proposal preparation activities from the trustee of the GRIF, the World Bank. The GRIF is the mechanism through which monies from Norway’s five-year US$250 million forests partnership with Guyana are channelled to this country.

The expected outputs of this first phase are the creation of a functional, scalable and transparent disbursement mechanism; the strengthening of the capacity of the