Above: the Dominican Republic

By the Caribbean Journal staff

The Inter-American Development Bank has approve a loan of as much a $100 million to help fund poverty alleviation programmes in the Dominican Republic.

The project aims to reduce the country’s poverty gap from 12.1 percent (2011) to 9.9 percent by the year 2016. The funding will “finance conditional cash transfers (CCT), human capital development in health and education and the first evaluation of “Progresando con Solidariedad” programme. The latter supports the Social Protection System in the Dominican Republic.

According to the IDB, the funding could reach 288,399 households receiving conditional cash transfers.

While the poverty rate in the Dominican Republic has fallen to 40.7 percent in 2011, and extreme poverty fell to 10.2 percent, it remains above the Caribbean average, according to the IDB.

The IDB loan is for an 18-year term.