The crit­i­cal is­sue with Ja­maica’s Fi­nance Min­is­ter, Dr Nigel Clarke, sched­uled to take up the po­si­tion as one of the four deputy man­ag­ing di­rec­tors of the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF), is that he will be in place to en­cour­age pol­i­cy ini­tia­tives which are favourable to the Caribbean and oth­er small de­vel­op­ing economies of the world.

The Ja­maican-born econ­o­mist “will have re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the pro­grammes and en­gage­ment that the small states have with the IMF,” man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of the IMF, Kristali­na Georgie­va, said of his im­pend­ing as­sign­ment.

How­ev­er, hav­ing in­flu­ence at the IMF will on­ly be one as­pect of the re­gion ben­e­fit­ing from the ap­point­ment of a Caribbean na­tion­al there.

Along with hav­ing Dr Clarke at the most se­nior IMF lev­els, the Caribbean and oth­er small states must be­gin to de­vel­op pro­grammes for fund­ing con­sid­er­a­tion. It can­not be that we, the small states, sit and wait for the Ja­maican-born econ­o­mist to pull pro­grammes for fund­ing and oth­er such at­ten­tion out of the blue skies of the Caribbean.

The ini­tia­tive will sure­ly be with the Caribbean and the de­vel­op­ing world to bring such mat­ters to the at­ten­tion of the IMF through sol­id eco­nom­ic pro­grammes. For some time now, Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley has been con­tend­ing against the IMF and oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions la­belling the Caribbean as mid­dle-in­come coun­tries. In such a cat­e­go­ry sta­tus, it means re­gion­al coun­tries do not qual­i­fy for spe­cial as­sis­tance, such as that af­ford­ed to the poor­est of coun­tries of the world.

The ex­pec­ta­tion now must be that through Dr Clarke, the Caribbean will make the ar­gu­ment that it’s vi­tal the re­gion has ac­cess to such soft fund­ing and de­vel­op­ment loans.

Of course, it will not be a case of get­ting grants and oth­er such spe­cial treat­ment from an in­ter­na­tion­al agency “free sheet.” In the same man­ner that the USA and France have a hold on the head po­si­tions of both the Fund and the World Bank, and utilise their in­flu­ence on these in­sti­tu­tions, so too the de­vel­op­ing world must now use this op­por­tu­ni­ty, which we do not over­es­ti­mate, to ex­er­cise in­flu­ence.

In the spir­it and let­ter of the Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas, Cari­com, as a group of na­tions over­whelm­ing­ly re­spon­si­ble for eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment of the re­gion, must come alive with the ap­point­ment of the Ja­maican-born econ­o­mist to be­gin the for­mu­la­tion of plans and pro­grammes with which we can in­flu­ence IMF pol­i­cy de­ci­sions for the re­gion.

Our lead­ers must make the ar­gu­ment clear and loud to the Wash­ing­ton-based IMF and to the in­dus­tri­al world, that vig­or­ous and suf­fi­cient­ly sta­ble economies in the de­vel­op­ing world re­dound not on­ly to the ben­e­fit of those coun­tries and their peo­ple, but al­so cre­ate trad­ing part­ners bet­ter able to in­te­grate with their economies.

Fur­ther, the mes­sage must be sent that such de­vel­op­ment pos­si­bil­i­ties not on­ly fos­ter more sus­tain­able growth and de­vel­op­ment all around, but it must be un­der­stood and ab­sorbed that coun­tries bet­ter able to care for their cit­i­zens will in­evitably re­sult in the re­duc­tion of con­flict, which is to­day a fea­ture of in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions.