The CDB President’s Caribbean trek

The fact that recently installed President of the Caribbean Development Bank, Dr. Hyginus ‘Gene’ Leon has undertaken visits to the Bank’s member countries across the region so soon into his tenure has to be seen as going beyond the formality of a getting-to-know-you trek, particularly in circumstances where the prevailing COVID-19 pandemic precludes the ‘luxury’ of that kind of pursuit at this time. The visits, one must therefore assume, have to do with the new CDB President’s particular interpretation of the level of urgency associated with engaging governments of the Bank’s member countries in the shortest possible time with regard to the institution’s preparedness to respond to the particular concerns of member countries at this time. Particularly significant here is what would have been the studied decision that these engagements would have been sufficiently urgent to set aside the virtual strictures imposed upon us by the pandemic.

One must assume too, taking as an example the high profile afforded Dr. Leon’s visit to Guyana, that governments in the region, as a whole, are keen to engage him at this time.

One doubts that any of Dr. Leon’s predecessors would have entered office at a more challenging time for the Bank. COVID-19 and the state in which it has left the economies of the region, particularly the tourism-dependent ones, makes that case with an unchallengeable profundity. Not to be excluded from the factors that bring a sense of urgency to the CDB President’s visit to countries across the region are the implications of the seasonal hurricanes for the all-round socio-economic stability of the various islands and what would this would mean for the role which the CDB would doubtless have to play in helping with the recovery process in the affected countries.

Dr. Leon would, as well, have had sufficient lead time to witness and digest the various other development-related challenges that have swept across the Caribbean over the years. It is this continually updated briefing, one feels that led him, recently, to voice what appeared to be considerable skepticism over whether the Caribbean as a region is anywhere near properly positioned to realize the United Nations’ 2030 Social Development Goals.

Going forward, therefore, the new CDB President is not playing with the best of hands at the start of his tenure and he is doubtless aware of this. Accordingly, his understanding of the particular socio-economic circumstances in which the region finds itself at this time and the enormous implications of that understanding for the Bank’s modus operandi in the period ahead would mean that his appreciation of the particular priorities on member countries

becomes critical to the shaping of a holistic agenda for the management of the Bank. His chances of so doing, he seemingly felt, had to be guided in large measure by securing, directly from regional governments and particularly regional leaders, an understanding of just what their major concerns are at this time.

What one might call the competing priorities of borrowing member countries is best understood and appreciated if the exchanges between Dr. Leon and the respective regional governments occur at the highest level of policy-making. That is why, in the instance of Guyana, the political administration trotted out the President and Vice President of the Republic along with the Minister responsible for Finance for the government’s engagement with the CDB President. One assumes, of course, that the level of engagement between Dr. Leon and the governments of the other CDB member countries would have occurred at a correspondingly high level.

Both the Bank and its borrowing member countries are, of course, aware that in the period ahead the CDB is likely to be inadequately resourced to respond to all of the needs of the various borrowing countries that will arise out of the fallout from COVID-19 in addition to the impact of weatherrelated damage inflicted on some countries in the region as well as the recent volcano in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. The CDB President will presumably want to ensure that as far as possible – and this, frankly, is a big ask – himself and CARICOM member countries are singing from the same hymn sheet as far as the Bank’s ability to respond to their various borrowing needs are concerned, going forward.

It will be recalled that back in June, Grenada’s Prime Minister Keith Mitchell pulled no punches in asserting during an exchange with the new CDB President that in these “tough times” the Bank needs to become “more innovative in serving member states.” That innovativeness can only arise out of a circumstance in which Dr. Leon can win the staunch backing of Caribbean governments for the agenda set by the Bank under his leadership.

Even before his recent trek, however, Dr. Leon appeared to have more than just an inkling of the socio-economic circumstances in which the Caribbean finds itself, a truism reflected in his undisguised expression of skepticism over whether, at the present rate, the region is anywhere close to being on track to meet the 2030 deadline for the realization of the clutch of seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) identified by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015 and which, significantly, includes eradicating poverty and hunger and ensuring region-wide “good health” and “quality education.”

As an aside, it would, of course, be surprising if any serious analyst of development in the region were to seek to essay anything even remotely close to a challenge to Dr. Leon’s pronouncement given the fact that we are now less than nine years away from the set deadline for the realization of the SDG’s.

The relevance of what Dr. Leon had to say about the region and the SDG’s is reflective of the sense of

urgency which he appears to have infused into the lighting of a proverbial ‘fire’ beneath the CDB’s member countries insofar as their respective development agendas are concerned. There can be no question than that, on the whole, the Caribbean is enormously adrift of any realistic targets that have to do with (for example) self -sufficiency in terms of food production and in some instances, anywhere close to being in a satisfactory position insofar as overall poverty-alleviation is concerned.

The reality is that here in the Caribbean political leaders usually tend to favour polemics over pragmatism in their approach to development challenges which is precisely why, even as we continue to lionize the food security potential which our agricultural sector offers we endure a food import bill that reportedly exceeds US$5 billion. Information regarding these kinds of anomalies and what exactly is being done (or not being done, as the case may be) by CARICOM countries to address them are important to how the new CDB President relates to member countries.

What has so far been reported on the CDB President’s recent visit to Guyana suggests that the government officials with whom he met were concerned that CDB provide greater support for private sector development. There is, of course, every reason for the CDB to provide support for the local private sector since that sector’s pursuit contributes to the economy in various ways, including those that have to do with generating employment and contributing to livelihoods. Except of course that whenever these occasions arise one is inclined to remind that the private sector, as properly defined, means both the small and micro sub-sectors, including the vast numbers of emerging businesses that have to endure the nightmare visited upon them by the COVID-19 pandemic and more recently in the instance of Guyana the near countrywide floods that have inflicted further woes on the agriculture sector in particular.

The point to be made here is that in making public its wish that the CDB provide more support for the country’s private sector the government here needs to make clear whether it means those businesses under the umbrella of the ‘recognized’ private sector Business Support Organizations (BSO’S) or whether the reference includes those micro and small businesses which, these days, probably support almost as many households as what one might call the conventional businesses, but which, truth be told, have been, for the most part, faring badly insofar as any really meaningful transformative support is concerned. That is one of the challenges that the government here has to address if it is to give genuine expression to its stated desire that the private sector, which includes the micro and small business sectors, grows and prospers, generates income, provides employment and empowers ordinary Guyanese.