BRIDGETOWN–The Bar­ba­dos-based Cari­com De­vel­op­ment Fund (CDF) has a new chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (CEO), who will lead that or­gan­i­sa­tion through its Sec­ond Fund­ing Cy­cle, 2015-2020.

He is Ro­d­i­nald Soomer, an econ­o­mist, who was pre­vi­ous­ly em­ployed in the Di­vi­sion of Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs with the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of East­ern Caribbean States (OECS) Com­mis­sion, from May 2005 to Au­gust 2015, where he head­ed the Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment Pol­i­cy Unit.

The hold­er of a Bach­e­lors De­gree in Eco­nom­ics from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) and a Mas­ters De­gree in Eco­nom­ics from Britain's York Uni­ver­si­ty with a spe­cial­i­sa­tion in Project Analy­sis, Fi­nance and In­vest­ment, Soomer's man­age­ment re­spon­si­bil­i­ties with the OECS in­clud­ed over­sight of re­gion­al sec­tor pro­grammes in agri­cul­ture, tourism, sta­tis­tics and E-gov­ern­ment, and a lead role in the prepa­ra­tion of a re­gion­al growth and de­vel­op­ment strat­e­gy.

With the CDF, Soomer's key re­spon­si­bil­i­ty will be to pro­vide di­rec­tion and lead­er­ship to the CDF's plan­ning, strat­e­gy de­vel­op­ment and im­ple­men­ta­tion process­es. These in­clude iden­ti­fy­ing fund­ing sources, quan­ti­fy­ing re­source re­quire­ments, de­sign­ing strate­gies to ap­proach po­ten­tial con­trib­u­tors and de­vel­op­ment part­ners, and ad­min­is­ter­ing ap­pro­pri­ate poli­cies for the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the fund's cap­i­tal.

The new CEO will en­gage in high-lev­el pol­i­cy di­a­logue with mem­ber states' gov­ern­ments and part­ner re­gion­al agen­cies in de­vel­op­ing pro­grammes and in­ter­ven­tions con­sis­tent with the strate­gic goals of the CDF, whose man­date is to pro­vide tech­ni­cal and fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance to the dis­ad­van­taged coun­tries, re­gions and sec­tors in Cari­com to en­able them to max­imise the ben­e­fits of par­tic­i­pa­tion in the CSME.