LIAT (Antigua and Barbuda) (Antigua) has received a USD15.8 million loan from a bank in Venezuela, a development that one US senator has called “troubling”, the Antigua Observer reported.

Gaston Browne, prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, visited Venezuela on November 4 for his country to be formally inducted into ALBA Bank as a new member and sign a financing contract for the loan.

ALBA Bank was set up by former Venezuelan and Cuban leaders Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro in 2005, envisaged as a regional development bank providing resources to other countries in the region. Antigua and Barbuda thus became the bank's seventh member, joining Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Dominica, and St Vincent and the Grenadines.

Both St Vincent and the Grenadines and Dominica said they supported the “bold move” by Antigua and Barbuda to join the Bank.

Browne said that even though the government of Antigua and Barbuda was assuming financial liability for the loan, the injection would benefit the entire region.

“LIAT is our infrastructure that links our scattered islands into a single economic space, and it breathes oxygen into our tourism industry,” he declared.

Browne also met President Nicolás Maduro at the Miraflores Palace during the visit.

On November 6, US Senator Dick Durbin tweeted: “Troubling to see Antiguan Prime Minister Browne convey legitimacy to Maduro while he arrests & tortures his opposition & millions of Venezuelans flee in hunger & desperation. When will the proud democracies of our Caribbean neighbors stop enabling Maduro’s criminal regime?”

Meanwhile, on November 5, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley remarked that the regional airline, which is jointly owned by Barbados (49%) and Antigua and Barbuda (34%) along with Dominica, Grenada, and St Vincent and the Grenadines, is “doomed” under its current ownership because the governments' leaders are “not on the same page” on the cash-strapped carrier's future, Barbados Today reported.