Trinidad and To­ba­go has as­sumed the chair­man­ship of the Board of Di­rec­tors of the De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (CAF), fol­low­ing a se­ries of lead­er­ship changes at the Min­istry of Fi­nance in the wake of April’s gen­er­al elec­tion.

The an­nounce­ment came dur­ing an in­tro­duc­to­ry meet­ing on May 12 be­tween Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo and se­nior CAF of­fi­cials at the Min­istry’s head­quar­ters in Port of Spain.

T&T was slat­ed to take up the ro­tat­ing chair­man­ship in March, with then-fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert ex­pect­ed to as­sume the role. How­ev­er, Im­bert was moved as Fi­nance Min­is­ter by then Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young that same month and re­placed by Vish­nu Dhan­paul. The po­si­tion changed hands again fol­low­ing the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) de­feat in the April 28 gen­er­al elec­tion, which led to Tan­coo’s ap­point­ment un­der the new ad­min­is­tra­tion.

CAF rep­re­sen­ta­tives reaf­firmed the bank’s role as T&T’s prin­ci­pal mul­ti­lat­er­al de­vel­op­ment part­ner and high­light­ed on­go­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion with the min­istry on key ini­tia­tives in­clud­ing flood mit­i­ga­tion, dig­i­tal pay­ments, e-iden­ti­ty, state en­ter­prise gov­er­nance and pub­lic pro­cure­ment re­form.

CAF con­firmed that T&T’s chair­man­ship was for­malised at the 184th Board of Di­rec­tors Meet­ing on March 27 in San­ti­a­go, Chile.

Tan­coo was ac­com­pa­nied by Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Suzette Tay­lor-Lee Chee and Se­nior Debt An­a­lyst Jim­my Wong. CAF’s del­e­ga­tion in­clud­ed Di­rec­tor Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Bernar­do Re­que­na, Caribbean Re­gion­al Man­ag­er Sta­cy Richards-Kennedy and Prin­ci­pal Ex­ec­u­tive Stephanie Ledes­ma.