To­day, the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank (CDB) turns 50. It was es­tab­lished on Jan­u­ary 26, 1970. The first Pres­i­dent of the CDB was Sir Arthur Lewis who had pre­vi­ous­ly been the first West In­di­an prin­ci­pal of the Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege of the West In­dies (UCWI) (1959-1962) and the first Vice-Chan­cel­lor (1962-1963) of The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) that re­placed the UCWI in 1962.

Lewis had fought des­per­ate­ly to save the Fed­er­a­tion of the West In­dies from the demise that it suf­fered in 1962 af­ter the Ja­maican ref­er­en­dum of 1961 and he was per­haps the ide­al per­son to be the first Pres­i­dent of the CDB up­on its for­ma­tion.

Im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the Ja­maican ref­er­en­dum on Sep­tem­ber 19, 1961, Lewis, then the prin­ci­pal of the Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege of the West In­dies (UCWI), was hired as a “dol­lar-a-year” rep­re­sen­ta­tive by the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment of the West In­dies to “ex­am­ine the prospect of sal­vage pro­pos­als” for the West In­di­an Fed­er­a­tion with­out Ja­maica. Lewis vis­it­ed the nine re­main­ing ter­ri­to­ries, the Colo­nial Of­fice, and al­so met pri­vate­ly with Dr Er­ic Williams. The se­cret Lewis Re­port to Prime Min­is­ter Grant­ley Adams in Oc­to­ber 1961 pro­vid­ed a roadmap for the re­vised Fed­er­a­tion that nev­er came to pass.

Al­though Lewis was play­ing a cen­tral role in try­ing to sal­vage the Fed­er­a­tion with his diplo­ma­cy be­tween Grant­ley Adams, the Colo­nial Of­fice, and Er­ic Williams, his view of Er­ic Williams soured by the end of 1961 by which time he ad­vo­cat­ed for a Fed­er­a­tion with­out Trinidad and To­ba­go af­ter four months be­tween Sep­tem­ber 19, 1961 (the Ja­maican ref­er­en­dum) and Jan­u­ary 14, 1962 (when T&T’s with­draw­al from the Fed­er­a­tion was an­nounced).

The is­sue of a re­gion­al de­vel­op­ment bank was first sug­gest­ed in Ju­ly 1966 at an of­fi­cial lev­el at the Cana­da-West In­dies Prime Min­is­ters’ meet­ing in Ot­tawa, Cana­da. The Cana­di­an Gov­ern­ment was sym­pa­thet­ic to it and the orig­i­nal in­tent was to sat­is­fy the cap­i­tal needs of the pro­posed fed­er­a­tion of the “Lit­tle Eight” that re­mained af­ter Ja­maica and Trinidad and To­ba­go had left the Fed­er­a­tion.

The UNDP en­tered the pic­ture in 1967 and Com­mon­wealth Caribbean of­fi­cials meet­ing in Guyana en­dorsed the UNDP rec­om­men­da­tions which re­gion­al Heads of Gov­ern­ment al­so en­dorsed in 1967. This led to a Char­ter for the Re­gion­al De­vel­op­ment Bank be­ing worked out.

By this time, the pro­posed mem­ber­ship had been broad­ened be­yond the so-called “Lit­tle Eight.” How­ev­er, the fi­nal stages lead­ing up to the es­tab­lish­ment of the CDB were not so smooth. Ja­maica an­nounced on April 29, 1968, that it would with­draw from the pro­posed bank.

In a con­fi­den­tial mem­o­ran­dum from T&T High Com­mis­sion­er to Ja­maica, Er­ic Mur­ray, to Prime Min­is­ter Williams on May 3, 1968, he stat­ed that “Ja­maica’s in­sis­tence on hav­ing the bank site sug­gests that the Gov­ern­ment con­sid­ered that there were ‘hid­den’ ben­e­fits which it could utilise and which would be lost to Ja­maica if it were sit­ed else­where…”

This led to a whirl­wind tour of Caribbean coun­tries in June/Ju­ly 1968 led by Ka­malud­din Mo­hammed, then min­is­ter of West In­di­an Af­fairs. In a pri­vate and con­fi­den­tial in­ter­im re­port from Ka­mal to Prime Min­is­ter Williams on the eve of the del­e­ga­tion’s de­par­ture from Ja­maica to go to The Ba­hamas, he re­port­ed to Williams as fol­lows:

“We had a very long ses­sion of over three hours with Mr Shear­er. He was ad­vised by Light­bourne, Sea­ga and Vic­tor Grant, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al. We put our case on the ba­sis that in view of the need which is felt in the small­er is­lands for the De­vel­op­ment Bank it would be a good ges­ture for Ja­maica to re­turn with­in the fold and make her con­tri­bu­tion since CARIF­TA it­self is of very lit­tle val­ue to the less de­vel­oped coun­tries. Shear­er and Light­bourne to­geth­er with the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Grant, are def­i­nite­ly sym­pa­thet­ic…It is known that Sea­ga is still very hos­tile…”

As a di­rect re­sult of this per­sua­sion, Ja­maica even­tu­al­ly joined the Bank af­ter con­sid­er­able un­cer­tain­ty about its in­ten­tion to do so. The Draft Agree­ment for the CDB was agreed by min­is­ters at a meet­ing in T&T on Ju­ly 22, 1969 and the for­mal agree­ment was signed in Ja­maica on Oc­to­ber 18, 1969.

The first 18 coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries that be­longed to the bank were An­tigua, The Ba­hamas, Bar­ba­dos, British Hon­duras, British Vir­gin Is­lands, Cana­da, Cay­man Is­lands, Do­mini­ca, Grena­da, Guyana, Ja­maica, Montser­rat, St. Kitts/Nevis/An­guil­la, St Lu­cia, St Vin­cent, T&T, Turks and Caicos Is­lands, and the Unit­ed King­dom.