The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

The Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) approved $200m in loans and grants last year as it focused on regional integration as a means to achieve the 2030 sustainable development goals (SDGs).

Daniel Best, its director of projects, said yesterday: "We approved just over $200m in loans and grants in 2019 in preparation and construction of economic infrastructure projects, and investment in agriculture and in micros, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). These projects are aimed at increasing the region's competitiveness, building climate resilience and ensuring environmental sustainability."

Dr Justin Ram, the CDB's director of economics, added: "In 2019, the CDB published its new multi-dimensional vulnerability index. This provides a more holistic view than the previous economic vulnerability index, as it includes measures of social vulnerability and a climate change vulnerability component.

"The index shows that the main vulnerabilities of BMCs (borrowing member countries including The Bahamas) are dependence on strategic imports, export concentration and exposure to natural hazards and climate change. The index assists countries in determining their development priorities to become recipients, and has the potential to broaden BMCs access to concessional finance regardless of income per capita.

"Our research will provide an evidence base for promoting truly inclusive and resilient economies. For example, we will examine the social benefits of equal opportunity combined with economic competitiveness. We will explore enhanced regional integration through a study of factor mobility, and we will consider how inclusivity and resilience might be undermined by high levels of crime."

Dr Warren Smith, the CDB's president, spoke about the urgency for its member countries to reach "key milestones" in the coming decade as it relates to the SDGs, ending poverty and reducing inequality.

"Our borrowing members recorded another year of low growth, averaging just about one percent in 2019 compared with 1.6 percent in 2018. This slowdown was consistent with relatively sluggish global growth of 2.9 percent," he added.

Dr Smith blamed most of this on the ongoing trade tensions between the US and China, in addition to "geopolitical anxieties" in the Middle East that he said presented "major downside risks". Other potential setbacks included ongoing protests about corruption, issues with climate change, inequality and political freedoms.

Dr Smith said regional integration through the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME) was critical to the region and its members meeting the 2030 SDGs. "I think that the CSME is a very, very important component of the strategy to realise the SDG's, the sustainable development goals, which focuses on the elimination of poverty in our lifetime, in fact by the year 2030," he added.

"It speaks to how we put ourselves in a position where we are less vulnerable economically, and in a number of other ways. But what it requires is a kind of infrastructure; we need the framework. We need to implement some of the things we said we need to implement in order to make this thing really happen."

Dr Smith identified concerns over the "free movement of labour between our countries" as one of the obstacles to further regional integration. There was also, he added, the need to establish mechanisms for exports between Caribbean countries.

"We cannot 'de-link' the possibility of reaching the SDGs from that of achieving full CSME implementation," Dr Smith said.