GROS ISLET, St Lucia — President of the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) Dr Gene Leon yesterday called on countries across the region to forge greater partnerships in order to fast-track their holistic and sustainable development as individual territories.

In his remarks on Tuesday during the opening ceremony of the regional bank’s 53rd annual general meeting, the president said that while sustainability remains a dream for most countries, its acceleration will require support from a number of stakeholder groups spanning the private sector, government and the international community.

“Sustainable development is too important for it to be the exclusive purview of government. Let us agree we need to share to grow — sharing opportunities, burdens, and responsibilities,” he told guests and delegates gathered for the meeting held at the Sandals Grande St Lucia hotel.

“Partnerships should take place at various levels, partnerships among multilateral financial institutions that go beyond national/continental boundaries. Regional and external associates can also pursue partnerships in knowledge creation — sharing technology to improve global productivity. and focusing on national goals that can be effectively delivered through complementarities and synergies between private and public sectors while breaking trust barriers and unifying a focus on country prosperity,” Leon added.

“Partnerships can also occur in capacity building. For example, we can re-imagine our learning systems and develop centres of excellence through using technology to bridge skills gaps across Caribbean islands — particularly in new and emerging areas such as animation and gaming, robotics, digital media and green engineering. This can expand skill sets and create jobs and business opportunities, particularly for the youth, and help to mitigate some of the outward migration of our best and brightest young people,” he also said.

Citing partnership as a key variable in its framework geared towards building internal resilience capacity across countries, the president also mentioned international development paradigms and strengthened policies as the two other important tenets of the trilogy needed for heightened sustainability.

“We need policies and supporting instruments that are designed to drive fit-for-purpose investment activities, enhance implementation capacity for building resilience, and increase access to adequate and affordable financing for investments,” he said, noting therefore that it was to this end that the CDB will be creating policies and designing instruments geared toward developing a resourcing ecosystem that provides liquidity for rescue, recovery, and repositioning based on the metrics of need, and not only on gross domestic product (GDP).

Some of these, he said, would include contingent disaster financing instruments, contingent debt instruments to cushion the effects of exogenous shock, along with other instruments for mobilising and intermediating private sector financing for development as well as debt sustainability frameworks, and expanded insurance instruments to facilitate resilience. Efforts to establish a more robust architecture to address the loss and damage needs of vulnerable countries, he said, were also underway.

“Let us agree we need a suite of instruments and affordable financing, with appropriate governance frameworks, to customise our varying needs and deliver on the promise of resilient prosperity for all,” Leon stated.

The CDB, as it continues to marshal financing and offer funding support to its borrowing member countries (BMCs), last year saw its level of disbursements increase by 12.2 per cent to total almost US$286 million – US$180.7 million, of which accounts for loans, and US$105 million for grants.

Cognisant of the continued headwinds the bank, in pledging further commitment to the region, also said it remains steadfast and single-minded in its aspiration to accelerate the pace of economic activity as it closes the gap to achieving the SDGs and fundamentally altering the development path to place countries on a higher and more sustainable welfare path in the future so as to build their internal resilience capacity.

“Our efforts alone will not take us over the finish line… we [therefore] request the continued and unwavering support of all as we are determined to introduce and execute novel and innovative approaches to support our membership. The fate of the region and the bank are inextricably linked, as when the region succeeds the bank succeeds. It is, therefore, in our collective interest to work together,” he concluded.

Chairman of the bank’s board of governors and prime minister of St Lucia Philip J. Pierre, in lauding the CDB as a strong regional financial institution which has provided strong support to member countries over the last five decades, further challenged countries to judiciously manage their economies in order to play their respective part in keeping the institution solvent.

“As the CDB fulfils its mandate, countries must also manage their economies to provide the necessary fiscal space to allow for the repayment of debt to the institution,” he urged.