$300 Million Loan Forgiveness is Huge Burden Lifted Off of Territory, Bryan Says

Governor Albert Bryan on Friday told the Consortium that the $300 million community disaster loan forgiveness that recently was approved by Congress relieves the territory of a huge burden while opening the door for opportunities in the bond market.

"The first thing it does, we have an agreement with FEMA that any time we go to borrow any money that we had to gain an approval from them, so that immediately goes away," Mr. Bryan said. The government also had to give FEMA priority payments, called a priority lien, from the Matching Fund Revenue and Gross Receipt Tax bonds over the Government of the Virgin Islands’ other bondholders.

"What it does now because we're going through some trying times here, if we needed to borrow money it reopens our credit, so we now have the ability to borrow some money should we hit some trying times. And with what's happening with the refinery, as well as the veracity of the storms that's in the Atlantic right now, that's huge too. It also eases the debt burden of WAPA which was a concern to us because that $80 million is now erased from WAPA's debt load. So that's why we've been working on this for two and a half years. It has a lot of impact on the territory," the governor explained.