Grenada seeks debt suspension

ST GEORGE’S, Grenada, CMC – The Grenada Government has reached to its financial agencies and multilateral partners requesting that the debt payment suspension clause in several loan agreements be triggered after the island was devastated by Hurricane Beryl.

In 2022, the national debt of Grenada amounted to an estimated US$0.77 billion.

“The Minister of Finance has already written to some of our multilateral partners to indicate to them that this catastrophic event has happened and to trigger our debt suspension clause in some of these agreements,” Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell told a news conference.

Following the passage of Hurricane Ivan in 2004, then Prime Minister Dr Keith Mitchell had advocated and successfully campaigned for a debt suspension to be included in all new loan agreements.

The clause is triggered whenever the country is experiencing hazards from natural disasters, such as hurricanes, earthquakes or a health pandemic. The last time Grenada requested a triggering of that clause was in 2020 when COVID-19 was declared a pandemic.