The Council of Ministers has proposed this Tuesday the granting of a credit for an amount of up to 50 million dollars (about 46 million euros) to the Dominican Republic for a universal sanitation program for the country’s tourist and coastal towns.
Said program will be co-financed by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), which will contribute 80 million dollars (73.6 million euros), and by the Korean Co-financing Mechanism for the Development of Infrastructure in Latin America and the Caribbean ( KIF), which will deliver 60 million dollars (55.2 million euros).
To these IDB and KIF items will be added the Fund for the Promotion of Development (Fonprode), approved at the request of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, this being an investment included in the General State Budget.
The general objective of the program is to improve the environmental conditions and the health of the inhabitants of the beneficiary localities through access to sanitation services managed in a sustainable and safe manner.
In addition, this loan will serve to increase the coverage of safely managed sanitation in the localities intervened by the program, improve the management of drinking water services and contribute to the strengthening of water and sanitation operators and the National Institute of Drinking Water and Sewers.
The Dominican Republic is a Middle Income Association country, according to the V Master Plan for Spanish Cooperation, which is also located in a strategically critical region and the main recipient of bilateral Official Development Assistance issued by Spain.
This operation would be aligned with the objectives of the Spanish Cooperation, contributing directly to the achievement of the goals of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), specifically, SDG 6 (Clean water and sanitation, by improving the quality of water for supply) and SDG 11 (Sustainable cities and communities, through improved infrastructure).