Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an yes­ter­day is­sued a call to the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) to give more weight to the voic­es of small economies. Dook­er­an's call comes in a let­ter to the IMF and at a time of change in the lead­er­ship of the in­sti­tu­tion fol­low­ing the res­ig­na­tion of the its man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Do­minique Strauss-Kahn, who is be­fore the courts in New York fac­ing charges of sex­u­al as­sault. In a let­ter to the IMF, Dook­er­an stat­ed: "We ask the new lead­er­ship of the IMF to give a cred­i­ble at­ten­tion and voice to the eco­nom­ic, mon­e­tary, and po­lit­i­cal chal­lenges of small states and their economies.

"While we wel­come the im­prove­ments made to the lend­ing fa­cil­i­ties of the Fund in the last two years (with the in­tro­duc­tion of the Flex­i­ble Cred­it Line, the Pre­cau­tion­ary Cred­it Line, the Post Cat­a­stroph­ic Debt Re­lief Trust and the re­form of the con­ces­sion­al lend­ing fa­cil­i­ties to Low In­come Coun­tries); nonethe­less, a gap per­sists, as con­ces­sion­al fi­nanc­ing for small states is still in­ad­e­quate. "Re­cent de­vel­op­ments in the Caribbean and oth­er re­gions have re­vealed the ad­di­tion­al fragili­ties and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties of small states to nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, the col­lapse of fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and the con­cen­tra­tion of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

"Is­sues im­pact­ing small economies must be part of shap­ing the man­i­festo for the can­di­dates of the IMF; in par­tic­u­lar we are con­cerned that:

• Changes to the in­ter­na­tion­al ar­chi­tec­ture in which the IMF and G20 sit, lends it­self to a po­ten­tial con­tra­ven­tion of nat­ur­al jus­tice where clubs of large coun­tries sit and de­vel­op rules for small­er states to fol­low with­out ad­e­quate con­sul­ta­tion, con­sid­er­a­tion and en­gage­ment with small states;

• The de­vel­op­ment of in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial reg­u­la­tion, su­per­vi­sion, risk man­age­ment and the as­sess­ment of fi­nan­cial sec­tors, does not sup­port a lev­el play­ing field be­tween small and large states, and that the pref­er­en­tial treat­ment giv­en to ar­eas im­por­tant in some large states, from mort­gages, re­gion­al banks to hy­brid cap­i­tal-treat­ment that proved so dan­ger­ous in the fi­nan­cial cri­sis-al­so pe­nalis­es in­sti­tu­tions in small states be­yond eco­nom­ic jus­ti­fi­ca­tion;

• While small states par­tic­u­lar­ly need help in the fi­nanc­ing of in­fra­struc­ture, the cri­te­ria of lend­ing by the multi­na­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions is bet­ter suit­ed to larg­er states with cap­i­tal mar­kets, cred­it rat­ings and di­ver­si­fied pri­vate-sec­tor play­ers;

• The cri­te­ria used for long-term and short-term sup­port pays too much at­ten­tion to the lev­el of GDP per capi­ta, and not suf­fi­cient­ly to the much high­er lev­els of fragili­ty and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to nat­ur­al and eco­nom­ic shocks."

Dook­er­an, the chair­man of the World Bank Small States Fo­rum, sug­gest­ed a new lead­er­ship po­si­tion in the IMF fo­cus­ing on the chal­lenges of small economies to ad­dress these is­sues.