Three Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries are join the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean (Banco de Desarrollo de América Latina y El Caribe) also known as CAF as Series “C” members.
A CAF statement said that its board of directors, which met here recently, authorised the allocation of its shares to facilitate the entry of Dominica, Grenada and The Bahamas as members of the bank.
“Our positioning in the Caribbean will give a new dimension to an organisation that was created by six Andean countries – Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela -, which now fifty-six years later, has 21 shareholder countries and is one of the main sources of multilateral financing in the region.
“This expansion of CAF in the Caribbean will lead us to become the development bank with the widest coverage in Latin America and the Caribbean,” said CAF executive president, Sergio Díaz-Granados.
CAF said it took an important step 18 months ago to establish its Regional Office for the Caribbean, based in Trinidad and Tobago, with the aim of consolidating its development assistance to the Caribbean, particularly in support of climate action, water, energy, and food security, sustainable tourism, modernisation of infrastructure and digital transformation, among other sectors.
It said shortly after, CAF integrated the Caribbean into its official trademark and logo, which is now the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean.
“CAF has an ambitious agenda to promote regional integration as well as the sustainable and inclusive development of the region. CAF is fully committed to providing development assistance to address the unique needs of Caribbean islands and small states, which are disproportionately impacted by the effects of climate change. Within the framework of the Bridgetown Initiative, CAF has already committed US$15 million in support of the Blue-Green Bank initiative led by Barbados,” it added.
The Bridgetown initiative aims to speak on behalf of climate-vulnerable countries along the Equator and calls for an overhaul of the current global financial system led by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank to enable the mobilization of more private financing for the climate transition and improved resilience in so called “frontier countries”.
The idea was first unveiled by Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley at COP26 in Glasglow and further developed with the help of international academics and civil society during a gathering in July 2022 at Bridgetown.
