Global Concessional Financing Facility for the Middle East and North Africa Region - Lebanon - 2

The Global Concessional Financing Facility (GCFF) established in July 2016 is an innovative financing mechanism designed to mobilize financial resources to support middle-income countries affected by refugee crises in the Middle East. The GCFF combines grants from donor countries with loans from multilateral development banks to create concessional financing packages for refugee-affected countries initially Jordan and Lebanon. Supporting donor countries (nine donor countries) provide funds to the GCFF with the World Bank acting as Trustee. As a supporting donor Canada is a member of the Steering Committee for this financing mechanism. GCFF’s overall goal is to provide critical medium and long-term development support to refugee populations as well as impacted host communities in Jordan and Lebanon. The GCFF establishes a sustainable long-term and predictable financing platform for countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region by addressing the problems of gaps in multi-year and medium-term financing typically associated with development and emergency humanitarian interventions. Through access to low-interest loans the GCFF enables critical investments urgently needed to support infrastructure projects and programs in areas such as education health and job creation to create sustainable development outcomes. This is expected to help countries better absorb the economic and social shocks of the refugee crisis and assure the well-being of vulnerable populations within their borders. This project is one of four parts of Canada’s contribution to the GCFF which has a total value of 40 million of dollars including 32 million for Jordan and 8 million for Lebanon.

The expected outcomes for this project include:(1) leverage innovative financing modalities to create concessional financing packages for middle-income countries impacted by the influx of refugees in order to provide development support at more advantageous terms; (2) strengthen the resilience of countries impacted by the refugee crisis by financing projects that promote the effective delivery of basic services (e.g. education health); strengthen and develop critical infrastructure support social protection promote job creation and private sector participation and provide host countries with necessary budget support as it relates to the impacts of the refugee crisis; and (3) serve as an open platform to bring together the United Nations and multilateral development banks working in the region and encourage a more coordinated international response to the refugee crisis.