Singh charges IDB to hold true to newly launched ‘One Caribbean Strategy’

With the IDB’s recent launch of its ‘One Caribbean Strategy’, Minister of Finance Dr Ashni Singh has urged the multilateral institution to hold true on making the objectives a reality, as he promised that Guyana would play its part.

According to a statement from the Ministry of Finance, Singh, “pointed out that the strategy’s three main objectives of addressing climate change, reducing poverty and inequality, and bolstering sustainable growth are at the heart of the region’s development challenges, while he also urged the IDB Group to continue to be resolute in ensuring its engagement and operations in the region ‘fulsomely tackle these objectives’.

He suggested that to achieve these results, ‘our efforts at the balance sheet optimization for more resources to be available to our countries, developing appropriate lending instruments and modifying existing ones to meet our climate challenges, are critical.

The Finance Minister represented Guyana at the 2024 Annual Meetings of the Boards of Governors of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and IDB-Invest, which concluded in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic yesterday.

The ministry had informed that the meetings, which began on March 6, would have included discussions by economic and financial leaders from the 48 member countries of the IDB, about the challenges and opportunities for development in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The Boards of Governors are the highest authority responsible for the governance of the IDB and IDB Invest. Most are ministers of finance, ministers of the economy, or central bank presidents of their countries.

The One Caribbean Strategy was launched on Friday, the Finance Ministry said and IDB launched its One Caribbean Strategy and in a joint statement on the regional programme, IDB Governors for the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Guyana, Jamaica, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago, committed to intensifying joint efforts to “continuously improve the living conditions of citizens in the Caribbean region.

“We agree that there is a need to address the unique challenges of our region; and an opportunity to focus on the most pressing ones: high climate vulnerability and low resilience, low productivity, vulnerability to price shocks and food insecurity, large infrastructure gaps, limited implementation capacity, and citizen and business security,” the joint statement read.

Yesterday’s release said that Singh reminded that for member countries of the Caribbean constituency, the impacts of climate change are real and immediate and threaten not only development prospects, but “our very existence” and he expressed support for the call for greater ambition and innovation in the areas such as climate finance.

“We welcome the group’s leadership in supporting our countries and the region as we innovate to address climate change through mitigation and adaptation. The seven operational areas of focus provide sufficient opportunity for targeted and enhanced engagement to improve well-being and expand opportunities in our region. These areas not only enable the group to support countries in addressing our development challenges but to leverage our comparative advantages to improve lives and livelihoods,” he was quoted as saying.

Speaking on behalf of the region, according to the release, Singh stated that the countries of the Caribbean look forward to ambitious, focused and innovative approaches by the IDB in areas such as private sector development. He alluded to and welcomed IDB Invest’s expanded mandate and capital under Invest 2.0 “which will support the needs of the region’s growing private sector with appropriate financing through such instruments as equity and quasi equity, as well as upstream and advisory services,” it added.

The second and third areas with which he expressed the region’s appreciation were digital transformation and sustainable tourism. Digital transformation, he noted, seeks to improve service delivery, address social protection, poverty reduction, enhance human capital development and enhance the competitiveness of the region’s industries and countries. Sustainable tourism, he said, was a sector that must be viewed in the context of its employment generation potential, its economic impact on the micro, small and medium enterprises sector and its potential to help address inequality.