Pres­i­dent of the Bar­ba­dos-based Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank (CDB), Dr. Gene Leon, Mon­day called for greater col­lab­o­ra­tion to ac­cel­er­ate a sus­tain­able and trans­for­ma­tive de­vel­op­ment agen­da for the re­gion urg­ing the Unit­ed King­dom gov­ern­ment to re­dou­ble its fi­nanc­ing for a project that has been ben­e­fi­cial to the Caribbean.

Ad­dress­ing the week long in­au­gur­al Unit­ed King­dom (UK)-Caribbean In­fra­struc­ture Con­fer­ence, Leon said the im­pact of glob­al events over the last three and a half years have shown that the re­gion’s de­vel­op­ment ef­fort needs ur­gent ac­tion.

“The spin-off ef­fects from this pe­ri­od of a glob­al pan­dem­ic, wors­en­ing im­pact of cli­mate change, nat­ur­al dis­as­ters like the vol­canic erup­tion in St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines, geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions, sup­ply chain dis­rup­tions, food and en­er­gy in­se­cu­ri­ty, and volatile fi­nan­cial mar­kets are un­prece­dent­ed."

Leon said that while the CDB’s bor­row­ing mem­ber coun­tries (BMC) have demon­strat­ed some for­ti­tude, their vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties and low re­silience ca­pac­i­ty have lim­it­ed progress to­wards the at­tain­ment of the Unit­ed Na­tions Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals (SDGs).

“Im­por­tant­ly, the means to achiev­ing faster progress may be elu­sive, with a re­cent study by the Unit­ed Na­tions Fi­nanc­ing for Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Re­port 2023 find­ing that SDG fi­nanc­ing needs are grow­ing, but de­vel­op­ment fi­nanc­ing is not keep­ing pace.”

He said the re­gion’s pre­mier fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion is ad­dress­ing this chal­lenge by steadi­ly in­creas­ing sup­port to its mem­bers. Last year, the bank’s dis­burse­ments in­creased by 12.2 per cent to US$285.9 mil­lion, in­clud­ing US$105 mil­lion in grants.

Leon said that this could not have been pos­si­ble with­out the valu­able part­ner­ship of the UK gov­ern­ment and every gov­ern­ment with­in the Unit­ed King­dom Caribbean In­fra­struc­ture Part­ner­ship Fund (UK­CIF).

Leon said that the UK­CIF Pro­gramme rep­re­sent­ed near­ly US$78.12 mil­lion of the to­tal grant fund­ing dis­bursed last year.

He said this part­ner­ship is in­stru­men­tal to the build­ing re­silient pros­per­i­ty in the BM­Cs and has fa­cil­i­tat­ed the de­liv­ery of de­vel­op­ment projects that have trans­formed the lives and liveli­hoods of Caribbean peo­ple in a way that nei­ther the CDB, the gov­ern­ment, nor the pri­vate sec­tor could have im­ple­ment­ed and com­plet­ed alone.

Leon said that it is clear that this part­ner­ship works, but much more needs to be done adding, re­silient pros­per­i­ty re­quires con­tin­ued in­vest­ment.

“It is im­per­a­tive, there­fore, that the UK­CIF pro­gramme, which ends in March 2026, is re­newed. I have out­lined, and the coun­try rep­re­sen­ta­tives here can tes­ti­fy, that the now near­ly one bil­lion US dol­lars port­fo­lio is mak­ing a dif­fer­ence in pro­mot­ing sus­tain­able liveli­hoods.”

“Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter, why stop the march to re­silient pros­per­i­ty that we have start­ed? I pro­pose a moon­shot, let us com­mit joint­ly to im­ple­ment­ing a dou­bling in port­fo­lio val­ue… with­in five years of a UK­CIF re­new­al.”

The event, which is be­ing held un­der the theme “Build­ing Re­silience for All,” is be­ing at­tend­ed by the UK’s Min­is­ter of State De­vel­op­ment and Africa, An­drew Mitchell.

It is be­ing co­or­di­nat­ed by the CDB in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the UK For­eign Com­mon­wealth and De­vel­op­ment Of­fice (FC­DO),

Leon told the con­fer­ence that is al­so be­ing at­tend­ed by Fi­nance, Eco­nom­ic Plan­ning and In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy Camil­lo Gon­salves, that ‘this re­gion de­serves noth­ing less.

“I would ar­gue we have no choice. We must lever­age pro­grammes and part­ner­ships such as the UK­CIF to ac­cel­er­ate a sus­tain­able and trans­for­ma­tive de­vel­op­ment agen­da. Our glob­al po­si­tion and im­pli­ca­tions of our struc­tur­al char­ac­ter­is­tics will al­ways de­ter­mine our vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, but when we up­scale the fi­nanc­ing in part­ner­ships such as this, it al­lows gov­ern­ments to make each project a qual­i­ty re­silience-build­ing in­vest­ment.”

He said that the CDB will re­lent­less­ly pur­sue its am­bi­tious agen­da to build in­ter­nal re­silience ca­pac­i­ty in the BM­Cs: en­hanc­ing the de­vel­op­ment par­a­digm to re­flect part struc­tur­al lega­cy of yes­ter­day, part shocks of to­day, and part ca­pac­i­ty to re­cov­er and con­tin­ue to grow.

“How­ev­er, we can­not do that with­out the col­lab­o­ra­tion of our de­vel­op­ment part­ners and that, col­leagues, re­quires shar­ing a com­mon vi­sion. In­deed, the sus­tain­able and trans­for­ma­tive de­vel­op­ment we seek is our joint re­spon­si­bil­i­ty."

The con­fer­ence brings to­geth­er in­fra­struc­ture prac­ti­tion­ers on projects fund­ed by the UK through the FC­DO across the re­gion and con­nects them with ex­per­tise to ex­am­ine strate­gies and op­por­tu­ni­ties for im­prov­ing and en­hanc­ing knowl­edge and im­pact in the area.

The or­gais­res say the in­tent is to cap­ture valu­able lessons from the projects and the cur­rent UK­CIF pro­gramme un­der im­ple­men­ta­tion by the CDB, to in­form the de­sign of fu­ture in­fra­struc­ture projects in the re­gion, build the re­gion­al ca­pac­i­ty and there­by in­crease the de­vel­op­ment out­comes and ex­tend the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of on­go­ing in­vest­ment in Caribbean In­fra­struc­ture.

KINGSTOWN, St. Vin­cent, Nov 20, CMC -

CMC/kc/ir/2023