Samoa receives World Bank grant of US$23.7 million

The World Bank has given a US$23.7 million grant to Samoa to support the country’s economic recovery plans.

A total of US$14 million has been committed through the second of a two-part resilience development project series.

This is in addition to US$9.7 million disbursed in May 2022 under the Catastrophe-Deferred Drawdown Option (Cat-DDO) of the first resilience project.

Samoa has drawn on similar funding in the wake of the measles outbreak in 2019, and in March 2020 to bolster the government’s financial capacity to support Covid-19 preparedness and response.

The World Bank statement also gave an insight in the struggles that the island nation is undergoing stating that “Although Samoa remained Covid-19-free until early 2022, the country operated under a State of Emergency since March 2020, triggered by the pandemic.”

“In March this year Samoa recorded its first community transmission and as of 13 June the country has reached its highest number of 14,376 community cases and 28 Covid-19 related deaths.”