National Transport Fund identified to access resources from Green Climate Fund

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BY GEORGINA KEKEA

THE National Transport Fund within the Ministry of Infrastructure and Development (MID) was identified as a potential national entity to seek accreditation for direct access of funds from the Green Climate Fund (GCF).

Climate Change Finance Adviser of the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, Exsley Taloiburi says one of the key recommendations of the Solomon Islands Climate Change and Disaster Risk Finance Assessment Report was to identify potential National Implementation Entities (NIE) to access resources from the GCF. The National Transport Fund (NTF) was identified as one of the potential NIE’s.

Taloiburi says, once NTF is able to get its accreditation, it would mean that Solomon Islands will be able to get direct access to finance from the GCF. 

Climate Change Finance Adviser,Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, Exsley Taloiburi
 “At the moment we don’t have any NIE so in order to access these resources from the GCF we have to go through these intermediaries referred to as implementing entities”, Taloiburi said.

He said at the moment there are a number of multilateral implementing entities like World Bank which the Solomon Islands government has used to access resources for the Tina River Hydro power Project and others such as ADB, UNDP and regional implementing entities as SPREP.

“So there is some project management fee in there but if we have a NIE, that project management fee could be used to recruit more positions and to strengthen the institutional capacities of national entities in Solomon Islands”, Taloiburi said.

He said there was positive feedback for the NTF to be used as a NIE when consultations and assessments were done in 2016. Taloiburi said donors mainly DFAT and other supporting stakeholders were quite supportive of the Solomon Islands government to have NTF as a NIE to access resources from the GCF.

“But not to focus on multisector approach. Their focus will be very specific to transport and infrastructure and that is the step ahead where NTF is progressing”, Taloiburi said.

NTF was established in 2010 to provide long term, sustainable mechanism for funding the maintenance of transport infrastructure in the country.

Currently, MID in collaboration with an USAID funded project have begun process to seek accreditation from GCF.

ENDS///

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