The vot­ing for a new pres­i­dent of the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank (CDB) was dead­locked on Wednes­day, with the board of gov­er­nors rep­re­sent­ing the 28 mem­ber coun­tries be­ing un­able to de­cide be­tween T&T's Gre­go­ry Hill and Daniel Best of Bar­ba­dos.

Hill cur­rent­ly serves as the CDB's vice pres­i­dent, fi­nance and cor­po­rate ser­vices, while Best is the se­nior in­fra­struc­ture and de­vel­op­ment ad­vi­sor to Prime Min­ster of Bar­ba­dos, Mia Mot­t­ley. A third can­di­date, Ba­hami­an Therese Turn­er Jones, who is the CDB's act­ing vice pres­i­dent of op­er­a­tions, was with­drawn from the elec­tion this week.

Ac­cord­ing to the agree­ment that es­tab­lished the CDB, the pres­i­dent of the Bar­ba­dos-based re­gion­al lender shall be elect­ed by a vote of not less than 66 per cent of the to­tal num­ber of the gov­er­nors rep­re­sent­ing not less than 75 per cent of the to­tal vot­ing pow­er of the mem­bers.

The CDB's two largest share­hold­ers are Trinidad and To­ba­go with 17.31 per cent and Ja­maica with 17.31 per cent. Cana­da and the Unit­ed Kin­dom hold 9.31 per cent each, while Italy and Ger­many are 5.58 per cent share­hold­ers.

The elec­tion for a new pres­i­dent of the CDB, fol­lows the de­ci­sion by the in­sti­tu­tion in April to send its for­mer pres­i­dent, Hy­gi­nus 'Gene' Ly­on, on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave.

Leon was the sixth pres­i­dent of the re­gion­al de­vel­op­ment fi­nance in­sti­tu­tion.

The found­ing pres­i­dent of the CDB was St Lu­cian Arthur Lewis, who was fol­lowed by William De­mas from T&T, Neville Nicholls from Bar­ba­dos, Comp­ton Bourne from Guyana and War­ren Smith from Ja­maica.

In the lat­est de­vel­op­ment, the CDB told the Caribbean Me­dia Cor­po­ra­tion (CMC) on yes­ter­day that the board of gov­er­nors con­vened a meet­ing on Wednes­day to com­mence the vot­ing process for the elec­tion of the Bank’s next Pres­i­dent.

“This process is on­go­ing and is ex­pect­ed to con­clude by De­cem­ber 6,” the CDB said.

The ad­di­tion­al round of vot­ing is ex­pect­ed to start on De­cem­ber 4.