Colleague Heads of Government
Heads of Multilateral Financial Institutions
Ladies and Gentlemen:

On behalf of my CARICOM colleagues I wish to thank our hosts the IDB for providing this very congenial lunch at which I can share some thoughts with you on some of the burning issues confronting our Region. President Moreno has always been very receptive to our ideas.

This Conference is itself remarkable in that it brings together Governments, members of Congress (and our various legislatures), the private sector, civil society, our diaspora and importantly the multilateral financial institutions to exchange views and ideas on how we may work together to promote the development of the Caribbean. This is as it should be since the challenges faced by the region are many and multifaceted requiring a strong collective effort if they are to be successfully addressed.

Over the years, we have tried to persuade the donor community and the multilateral financial institutions of the particular vulnerabilities of small states especially CARICOM. An impressive array of studies was done by several agencies including the World Bank and the Commonwealth Secretariat, all testifying to the particular problems of small countries. Finally in 1994, there was a special Conference in Barbados which even produced an Action Programme intended to address the challenges faced.

More than a decade later, there is little evidence that these efforts have produced any significant benefits for our countries. We can only conclude that despite the many protestations of sympathy and support on the part of the donor community and the MFls, there is a lukewarm reception to the idea that there is a special category of small and vulnerable countries deserving of special consideration and attention. Although there has been occasional acknowledgement of the need for special and differential treatment for such states, acceptance has been at best grudging and perfunctory.

The debate must now cease and a declaration clearly made by the developed countries and our development partners, as to whether they are prepared, as a matter of policy, to state definitively that small economies need help in order to assure their seamless integration into the global markets. In CARICOM as well, we need to stop making the case for vulnerability and special and differential treatment and demand answers from our developed partners and the Multilateral Financial Institutions as to whether they are prepared to accept this as a matter of policy.

If this happens, then the international community must go beyond mere words to create specially designed measures and mechanisms to enable our countries to overcome their current difficulties. The IMF measures our countries along the same standards as Brazil and India but special instruments are required to measure our performance if the policy of vulnerability is acknowledged so that development programmes could be suitably tailored. The MFls should not look narrowly at the per capita income of countries and graduate them out of soft loans. Those countries which have been designated as Middle Income Countries still face problems which are magnified because of their small size. It must be recognized that despite the MIC categorization they still need debt relief. I am therefore looking forward to this issue being taking a step further and for a declaration to be made by the MFls so that they can better respond to our development challenges.

In the studies to which I referred earlier, many proposals have been made for ameliorating our economic and social circumstances. One idea that comes to mind was for a Contingency Disaster Fund to assist states, such as those in the Caribbean which are prone to natural disasters. The World Bank has recently introduced Catastrophic Risk Insurance but we have been calling for sometime now for Special instruments to be developed to address the vulnerabilities of small states.

The success of this Conference on the Caribbean will be judged by the follow up on the range of issues with which we have engaged the United States Administration and our development partners.

At our meeting with President Bush today we took the opportunity to discuss a number of issues of interest and concern to the Region. With regard to deportees, we hope that we can work with the United States for assistance in reintegrating them into our society. In relation to crime and security, we made clear our position on the need for collaboration to fight drug traffickers and similarly the need for collaboration in the fight against small arms’ trafficking and reciprocity by the US to block small arms from entering the Region from the US. Training of teachers and support for the regional integration process through assistance for the Regional Development Fund were also raised. The US has pledged to give favourable consideration to renewing the Caribbean Basin Recovery Act.

President Bush has undertaken to put in place a mechanism for follow up of these and other issues discussed and the success of this Conference will in part be measured by the pace of implementation of these initiatives.

This is a unique Conference and I am pleased at the reception by President Bush, by the Ways and Means Committee and by the Heads of the Multilateral Financial Institutions. This augurs well for our future partnership.