The Third Pre-An­nu­al Meet­ing of the Gov­er­nors of the Caribbean Coun­try De­part­ment (CCB) of the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) is cur­rent­ly tak­ing place at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel, Port-of-Spain.Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment, Dr Bhoen­dra­datt Tewarie, in his ca­pac­i­ty as Gov­er­nor of the IDB for T&T, is host­ing the meet­ing which is be­ing at­tend­ed by IDB pres­i­dent Luis Al­ber­to Moreno and all his se­nior ex­ec­u­tives as well as the gov­er­nors of all Caribbean mem­ber coun­tries of the IDB.

Dur­ing the two-day meet­ing, ple­nary ses­sions, group dis­cus­sions and bi­lat­er­al meet­ings have been or­gan­ised, where gov­er­nors of the CCB, which in­cludes the Ba­hamas, Bar­ba­dos, Guyana, Ja­maica, Suri­name and T&T, have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to en­gage in bi­lat­er­al dis­cus­sions with the pres­i­dent and oth­er se­nior of­fi­cials of the IDB. The gov­er­nors al­so have a chance to dis­cuss amongst them­selves com­mon is­sues and chal­lenges to strength­en the re­gion­al po­si­tion in re­la­tion to the IDB.

A key area of fo­cus at this year's meet­ing is the re­struc­tur­ing of the pri­vate sec­tor win­dows of the IDB Group to bet­ter meet the needs of the bor­row­ing mem­ber coun­tries. The lim­it­ed sup­port of the pri­vate sec­tor arms of the IDB Group to pri­vate sec­tor in­sti­tu­tions in the Caribbean has been a long-stand­ing area of con­cern for mem­ber coun­tries. The re­struc­tur­ing ef­fort now un­der­way is a wel­come ini­tia­tive that will shape fu­ture col­lab­o­ra­tions be­tween the IDB and the pri­vate sec­tors of Latin Amer­i­can and the Caribbean.

To this end, with­in the Caribbean re­gion, T&T is ex­pect­ed to as­sume a lead­er­ship role in the re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise.