Caricom to appoint debt relief team

Caricom Secretariat, Guyana—A Caribbean Community (Caricom) Debt Advocacy Team is to be appointed to campaign for debt relief and/or debt amelioration on behalf of highly-indebted member states. This was one of the key outcomes of the recently-concluded 35th Conference of the Caricom Heads of Government Antigua and Barbuda. Caricom chairman Gaston Browne, Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, said the team would advocate with development partners on behalf of member states. The initiative emerged out of the recognition that the current burdensome debt is not realistic for some member states, given their structural and other economic vulnerabilities, Prime Minister Browne said.

Debt advocacy was one of the areas the Commission on the Economy zeroed in on as part of the measures to be taken to respond to the economic challenges facing the region. A regional debt management mechanism is to be designed and a regional fiscal sustainability framework formulated within six months, the newly-elected Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda said.
Another strategy proposed by the Commission on the Economy which the Heads of Government have sanctioned is resource mobilisation, particularly from non-traditional sources of financing. They have also agreed to pursue the promotion of public private partnerships for development of economic infrastructure with technical advice from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) and the World Bank.