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Global crisis impacting heavily on the Caribbean – La Rocque
Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretary General Irwin La Rocque says that the global economic crisis is having a severe impact on the region resulting in stagnation or declining growth rates.
Ambassador Irwin La Rocque
Addressing representatives from International Development Partners (IDP), at the Third Forum on Donor Coordination involving CARICOM, La Rocque said the fallout from the global crisis that began in 2008 “is still being felt deeply in this region.”
“Stagnant or declining growth rates, high per capita debt, falling fiscal revenues, diminishing fiscal space and increasing unemployment have been a prominent feature of some of the economies of CARICOM member states, particularly over the past few years. That situation has severely challenged the capacity of most CARICOM states to self finance their own development.”
He said grant financing and access to concessionary financial resources to finance development are becoming increasingly more important to CARICOM states, particularly at this time, “when some of our IDP are looking inwards and are even reducing the net outflow of their development cooperation provided through grant aid and concessionary financing”.
La Rocque said that in addition, the Region is confronted with the “troubling and vexing issues of differentiation and graduation which deny many countries access to such funding.”
“To graduate CARICOM member states from access to grant aid, concessionary financial resources or technical assistance, on the basis of per capita income cannot be right. Per Capita Income is, at best, an arithmetic ratio. It does not measure the level of poverty; it does not address the distribution of income; it does not say whether the economy is resilient and on a path to sustainable growth, and it certainly does not measure the capacity of a country to self-finance its growth. “
The CARICOM Secretary General said that as some of the Region’s partners shift from bi-lateral assistance to increasing reliance on regional programmes, there is greater responsibility on the CARICOM Secretariat to ensure coordination of the regional resource mobilisation effort, to attempt to minimise any adverse impact of such a shift on individual member states and to ensure value for money and optimisation of the use of these dwindling resources.
He said Regional leaders at their summit in Trinidad recently, had instructed the Guyana-based Secretariat to design a Resource Mobilisation Strategy to ensure adequate financing of Regional and National priorities to catalyse and ignite growth in CARICOM states.
“We will familiarise you with our development plans, strategies and priorities. We will jointly examine priority areas in which you can be of assistance to us. We will map out approaches intended to ensure that your assistance will facilitate development in our areas of priority and we will address how we can optimise the use of scarce resources.”
“As a Community we are looking for results and impact and we would welcome your cooperation and support in that regard,” he said, noting that CARICOM was hoping for increasing the number of Community priorities into IDP bi-lateral and regional programmes, increasing donor contributions to multi-year programmes of the Community and well as an increase in the number of multi-donors funded projects and programmes.
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