KY­RON REG­IS

ky­ron.reg­is@guardian.co.tt

Al­though hur­ri­cane re­con­struc­tion ef­forts bol­stered eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty in the Caribbean re­gion, the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank (CDB) Pres­i­dent Dr William War­ren Smith re­vealed that 2019 was an­oth­er year of lack­lus­tre growth for the bank’s Bor­row­ing Mem­ber Coun­tries (BM­Cs).

In the CDB’s 2019 An­nu­al Re­port, Smith said: “Eco­nom­ic growth of on­ly 1% in 2019 mir­rored the rel­a­tive­ly slug­gish in­ter­na­tion­al econ­o­my, con­strained by in­creas­ing glob­al trade, po­lit­i­cal ten­sions and mount­ing so­cial protest.”

Smith added that the ef­fects of drought in some BM­Cs al­so neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed the eco­nom­ic per­for­mance of the re­gion.

Ac­cord­ing to Smith, the achieve­ment of a sus­tain­able rate of eco­nom­ic growth is at the fore­front of the re­gion’s de­vel­op­ment agen­da.

He main­tained that this im­per­a­tive un­der­pins the com­mit­ment made in 2015 to sup­port the Unit­ed Na­tions’ 2030 Agen­da for Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment - a glob­al blue­print for end­ing pover­ty, achiev­ing a lev­el of hu­man de­vel­op­ment that is fair and in­clu­sive, and of­fer­ing a more sus­tain­able fu­ture for all by 2030.

Smith not­ed that gen­er­at­ing in­clu­sive and sus­tain­able growth and shared pros­per­i­ty re­quire en­sur­ing that all peo­ple have ac­cess to de­cent work, so­cial pro­tec­tion, and fi­nan­cial ser­vices.

He said that this thrust pro­vid­ed the frame­work for CDB’s ap­provals and dis­burse­ments to­talling US $340mil­lion and US $306mil­lion, re­spec­tive­ly in 2019.

“We re­spond­ed to our BM­Cs’ need for ma­jor in­vest­ments in in­fra­struc­ture that will not on­ly cre­ate jobs but lay the foun­da­tions for long-term growth,” Smith said.

In pur­suit of the Bank’s man­date, Smith con­tend­ed that the in­sti­tu­tion aims to en­sure that all Caribbean peo­ple can ful­fil their true po­ten­tial - free from pover­ty, ill-health and in­equal­i­ty.

He said as a re­sult, peo­ple are the ul­ti­mate ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the CDB’s projects and these in­di­vid­u­als take cen­tre stage in all of its in­ter­ven­tions. In Ja­maica, the CDB said fund­ing will pro­vide es­sen­tial pro­duc­tion and mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture and mar­ket­ing sys­tems to help small and medi­um-sized farm­ers to boost their pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and gain in­creased mar­ket ac­cess.

While in T&T, the CDB al­so tar­get­ed small and medi­um scale en­ter­prise de­vel­op­ment by chan­nelling a line of cred­it through a fi­nan­cial in­ter­me­di­ary.

Al­so fea­tur­ing in the CDB’s 2019 pro­gramme was the restora­tion of macro­eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty. Smith said: “We sought to achieve in our BM­Cs by pro­vid­ing bud­getary fi­nanc­ing in sup­port of fis­cal and oth­er re­forms aimed at trans­form­ing these economies for sus­tained eco­nom­ic growth and de­vel­op­ment.”

The fi­nanc­ing needs of the BM­Cs are enor­mous, and Smith added that these needs are de­mand­ing re­sources far be­yond CDB’s ca­pac­i­ty. At the strate­gic lev­el, there­fore, the CDB con­tin­ued to pur­sue and lever­age in­ter­na­tion­al part­ner­ships to se­cure im­proved ac­cess to con­ces­sion­ary funds.

Smith al­so said that the Bank has been un­der­go­ing an in­ter­nal trans­for­ma­tion pro­gramme to make the CDB stronger and more rel­e­vant while en­hanc­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion­al ef­fi­cien­cy, ef­fec­tive­ness and fi­nan­cial vi­a­bil­i­ty.