IDB pledges assistance to CARICOM integration process
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| Published on Friday, February 23, 2007 |
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By Gordon French
Caribbean Net News Guyana Correspondent
Email: gordon@caribbeannetnews.com
GEORGETOWN, Guyana: The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has approved a new strategy for support to the Caribbean Community's (CARICOM's) regional integration process in the period 2007-2010, the bank said in a statement.
The main objective of the strategy is to help Caribbean countries transform their regional integration process into an effective instrument of global integration, competitiveness and economic growth.
"The approval of this strategy by the Board of Directors strengthens the Bank's role as an important partner in the region's social and economic progress," said Jerry Butler, Executive Director for the Bahamas, Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago.
Firstly, the strategy will support full intra-regional market liberalisation, aligned with CARICOM's external liberalisation efforts and effectively managing the distributional risks of liberalisation. Specifically, the Bank will support CARICOM in its efforts to eliminate remaining restrictions to the free flow of goods, services, capital and people within the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME).
The bank will be seeking to align its regional and global integration agendas, establish effective regional mechanisms for adjustment support to help disadvantaged countries, regions and sectors in CARICOM and facilitate private sector development within a more open trading environment.
The second strategic area is regional cooperation to improve CARICOM's social and economic infrastructure in critical areas of development. The aim is to support horizontal initiatives that benefit all productive sectors, and to focus on initiatives that can improve, at a lower cost to members, the region's existing infrastructure and related services.
According to the statement, the Bank will offer support to five specific areas of regional cooperation namely, information and communications technology (ICT), energy, disaster risk management, statistics; and initiatives aimed at strengthening the management of the integration process itself, in terms of planning, monitoring and awareness building.
The Bank will work with regional authorities in CARICOM to develop a specific pipeline of projects in support of the strategy.
In the last five years, the IDB and its Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF) have provided grant funding of $2.7 million a year on average for regional integration and cooperation programmes in CARICOM.
Currently, the Bank is supporting 30 regional projects in the Caribbean, with contributions totaling over $14 million in grant funding. The Bank's regional programmes complement national activities in its Caribbean borrowing member countries. | | | | Reads : 148 | | | |
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