Mottley Urges Investment in The Caricom Development Fund

  • Barbados’ Prime Minister, Mia Mottley, on Monday said Caribbean Community (Caricom) nationals should consider investing their savings in the Caricom Development Fund (CDF), rather than leaving it in financial institutions that offer almost no interest.
  • Addressing the opening of the two-day AfriCaribbean Trade and Investment Forum (ACTIF23) in Barbados, Mottley said that the CDF has become a shareholder of the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), of which 11 Caricom nations are also members.
  • Mottley said she feels that the CDF is the glue that holds the Caricom Single Market and Economy (CSME) that allows for the free movement of goods, labour, services and finances across the 15-member grouping, together.
  • Under the CDF, disadvantaged countries, sectors or regions are entitled to be able to borrow at concessional rates to finance their development. When the CDF began, former Barbados prime minister, the late Owen Arthur, along with other regional leaders, tried to help with its financing. 'But many of our friends globally have not seen the need or urgency to support the region in tangible ways concerning the Caricom Development Fund,' Mottley said.
  • 'That is why we said that we needed to turn within the region and to create an opportunity where those persons who have money in savings accounts in the region and are receiving 0.0001 per cent might well recognise that there's an opportunity to get a larger percentage return of interest if they involve themselves in things pertaining to Caricom development.
  • The Barbados prime minister said that more importantly, she hopes that with the CDF being a shareholder of Afreximbank, there can be innovative ways to tap into the significant amount of savings and liquidity lying dormant in Caricom. These savings, she said, are 'laying dormant, not receiving proper interest rates and not, therefore, being able to work for itself, particularly in an inflationary environment, such as the one in which we find ourselves today, at the same time, with a development deficit that needs financing'.

(Source: Trinidad Express Newspaper)