By Dana Malcolm
Staff Writer
June 17, 2022 – Private sector partnerships are going to be the Caribbean’s saving grace as governments try to make the region the home of choice. This was the perspective of the heads of three major banks at the Caribbean Development Bank’s 2022 staging of their ‘Presidents Chat’, an event bringing together the presidents of multilateral development banks worldwide.
This year the meeting featured: Dr. Gene Leon president of the Caribbean Development Bank; Dr. Werner Hoyer president of the European Investment Bank and Mauricio Claver-Carone President of the Inter-American Development Bank along with past president of the CDB Dr. Warren Smith.
The Moderator of the event Dr. Marion Williams explained why the chat was so important.
“The series is designed to discuss issues in a non-technical manner that is readily accessible to citizens on all our continents,” she said
This year’s focus was on how multilateral development banks could play a catalytic role in finding innovative financing to push the development goals of their member countries, especially from the private sector; basically how to make companies want to invest within their member countries futures.
Most of the goals held by countries around the world stem from the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals including the elimination of poverty, enhancing food security, good health, quality education, climate action, etc. Leon explained the needs of the developing Caribbean states were huge and all of them needed to be tackled because,
“If we don’t do it all we simply cannot achieve the development goals.”
To make the Caribbean region a place of choice Leon said we must achieve four things; water, energy, food and quality of life security.
To meet these goals, the Caribbean had to have three key facilitators:
Financing to hit all of these targets was the region’s biggest problem Leon said and ‘Access to Adequate and Affordable Finance’ (#AAAF) was the goal.
“There is no way we can fix a trillion-dollar problem with a million dollars…there is no way we can get there without crowding in [and] partnerships in all areas.”
Hoyer of the EIB lauded the CDB citing its unparalleled experience with development challenges noting that by working together they could “achieve so much more”, especially in climate action.
He stressed that the time for investing in issues like climate change was now or the most vulnerable would suffer.
“The provision of grants and loans is not enough. New financial instruments need to be deployed in order to bring private capital to fund climate action.”
Claver-Carone of the IDB, who is from Miami, describes himself as the closest president to the Caribbean (geographically) in years.
“It was on my agenda to raise the profile of the Caribbean with the bank.” He maintained
Allocations to the six Caribbean countries that the IDB serves have tripled to about $1.2 billion across 16 different projects. He described his relationship with the Caribbean Development Bank as his most important relationship of all as it enabled support to Caribbean countries which are not a part of the IDB.
Claver-Carone reiterated that the financing gaps in the Caribbean and Latin America are too large for taxpayers to handle.
“The recovery of Latin America and the Caribbean will be private sector led… We’re gonna make this the biggest public-private push in the history of the bank.”
Creating a good investment climate is key to achieving more privately-funded financing that the governments in the Caribbean desperately need.
To do this Claver-Carone said stricter regulations, digitized government to promote transparency and more aggressive moves towards garnering private sector investments are the needs for the region.
The IDB President said the Caribbean is viewed globally as a ‘sea of peace’ in comparison to the current state of the rest of the world, maintaining that “We’re gonna turn that peace and tranquility into prosperity.”