by Kevon Browne
St. Kitts and Nevis (WINN)—The Eastern Caribbean Partial Credit Guarantee Corporation (ECPCGC) is a collaboration between the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank and the World Bank, which has provided loans to select member countries and provides technical assistance to the project.
The participating governments are Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
Each government has contributed US$2M to the Corporation, bringing the capital base to US$12M.
However, other partnerships are necessary for the project to continue operating and advancing.
On February 04, 2026, Shana Derrick, Communication Officer (Ag) in the Corporate Relations Department, during an episode of ECCB Connects, discussed with the CEO of the Eastern Caribbean Partial Credit Guarantee Corporation, Carmen Gomez-Trigg, about the importance of partnership to the ECPCGC.
“Okay, so the main partnership right now is the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank, because the idea was designed with the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank and the World Bank. The World Bank funded five of the countries to the tune of two million US dollars to put into our coffers. And one country came up with their own two million US dollars. So the funding was from the World Bank. The idea and the design was a collaboration between World Bank and ECCB. Now, when we were created, we had to go out and get our own stakeholders, get our own partnerships. We signed agreements with 21 financial institutions across the region, including banks, commercial banks, development banks, and credit unions. And we are happy to say the credit unions have now come into the fold. They are doing business with us. They have not only signed on, but they are actually doing guarantees and so on. Those are the partnerships at the level of the supply of credit to the borrowers. We also have partnerships with national support organisations. We’ll be working with a little bit more during the course of this year. And we have recently been approached by international organisations to design products for particular short-term purposes. And we’ll be rolling those out later on this year. So partnerships and collaboration, those are our watchwords.”
Gomez-Trigg continues to encourage Small and Medium Enterprises to contact the ECPCGC to use their services to develop their small businesses.
“The biggest mindset is that someone would steal my idea. Now, I want to tell our SMEs, we feel your pain. We identify. And because of this, we have asked people: if you don’t feel like going to the bank, please reach out to us. We give them an info@ecpcgc.org. And we are able to talk to them firsthand to find out what they need, what they have, what they don’t have, give them some advice on how they can bring themselves to a bankable status, because you have to be bankable to approach a bank to get a loan. So we continue to work. We will be continuing the virtual appointments. This year, we put out an announcement when we’re going to restart that. And we’re going to work with our clients. But it has meant a significant shift for us from our original business model, where the banks and the financial institutions were our gatekeepers, to where we are our own gatekeepers at the moment.”
The ECPCGC CEO reiterated the call to SMEs to strengthen and advance the ECCU’s economy.
“We understand your struggle. We are here to assist. Help us to help you build bigger and better.” – CEO of the Eastern Caribbean Partial Credit Guarantee Corporation, Carmen Gomez-Trigg.
