PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines has been con­firmed as a share­hold­er coun­try of CAF – De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

In a re­lease on Wednes­day, the bank con­firmed it had ap­proved the in­cor­po­ra­tion of the coun­try as a Se­ries C share hold­er.

The de­ci­sion was tak­en dur­ing CAF’s board of di­rec­tors meet­ing in Li­ma, Pe­ru, where the board ap­proved US$1.130 bil­lion for new op­er­a­tions across the re­gion in ar­eas such as wa­ter se­cu­ri­ty, cit­i­zen se­cu­ri­ty, re­sponse ca­pac­i­ty to nat­ur­al dis­as­ters and debt man­age­ment.

CAF ex­ec­u­tive pres­i­dent Ser­gio Díaz-Grana­dos said, “St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines is join­ing a de­vel­op­ment bank that un­der­stands the re­al­i­ties of Caribbean small states and the de­vel­op­ment chal­lenges of mul­ti-is­land states, in par­tic­u­lar. We are in­deed pleased to deep­en our part­ner­ship with St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines and are com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing prac­ti­cal, tai­lored fi­nanc­ing so­lu­tions so that the gov­ern­ment can de­liv­er on its promise to the com­mu­ni­ties in the var­i­ous is­lands.”

He con­tin­ued, “CAF is con­tin­u­ing to deep­en its en­gage­ment in the re­gion to sup­port cli­mate-re­silient in­fra­struc­ture, pro­duc­tive trans­for­ma­tion, as well as sus­tain­able and in­clu­sive growth. We are pleased to wel­come St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines in­to our CAF fam­i­ly of share­hold­er coun­tries.”

Since es­tab­lish­ing its re­gion­al of­fice for the Caribbean in 2022, CAF has more than tripled its share­hold­er coun­tries from the Caribbean. At the same time, the Bank con­tin­ues to chan­nel in­creased grant re­sources and in­vest­ments across the Caribbean in ar­eas such as wa­ter se­cu­ri­ty, en­er­gy tran­si­tion, dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, her­itage tourism, tech­ni­cal and vo­ca­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion, pri­vate sec­tor de­vel­op­ment, and the blue and green econ­o­my.

The bank hailed the de­vel­op­ment as a fur­ther ex­ten­sion of the reach of the Bank’s de­vel­op­ment fi­nanc­ing to the Caribbean.

As a Se­ries C share­hold­er, St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines will be able to ac­cess CAF’s ag­ile and flex­i­ble de­vel­op­ment fi­nanc­ing in­stru­ments, tech­ni­cal co­op­er­a­tion, and knowl­edge pro­grammes de­signed to re­spond to the spe­cif­ic needs of small is­land de­vel­op­ing states.

CAF ex­plained, "This lat­est in­cor­po­ra­tion fol­lows re­cent ap­provals by the board for Do­mini­ca, St Lu­cia, Haiti, and St Kitts and Nevis, all of which are at dif­fer­ent stages of com­plet­ing their in­cor­po­ra­tion process. These de­ci­sions re­flect CAF’s con­tin­ued com­mit­ment to chan­nelling ag­ile and flex­i­ble fi­nanc­ing to all Cari­com coun­tries as the Bank ful­fils its man­date to ad­vance re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean."

The meet­ing al­so marked Trinidad and To­ba­go’s han­dover of the chair­man­ship of the board to Uruguay, con­clud­ing its term as the chair and its his­toric role as the first Eng­lish-speak­ing Cari­com coun­try to pre­side over CAF’s board.

Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dave Tan­coo held the role of chair­man of the bank for most of the past year.