The race for a new Pres­i­dent for the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank is on and Trinidad and To­ba­go has field­ed a can­di­date that it hopes will lead to greater di­ver­si­ty and in­clu­sive­ness in the re­gion­al body.

For decades the IDB has been the pre­mier source of mul­ti­lat­er­al fi­nanc­ing and ex­per­tise for eco­nom­ic, so­cial and in­sti­tu­tion­al de­vel­op­ment in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

The elec­tion of a new IDB pres­i­dent, there­fore, comes at a time when coun­tries are grap­pling to man­age the ef­fects of cli­mate change, lim­it­ed fis­cal space, es­ca­lat­ing debt to GDP ra­tio, ris­ing in­ter­est rates, frag­ile in­fra­struc­ture and ris­ing pover­ty says Plan­ning Min­is­ter Pen­ne­lope Beck­les, who serves as this coun­try’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive on the IDB’s Board of Gov­er­nors as she en­dorsed T&T na­tion­al, Ger­ard Stan­ley John­son.

“For over 60 years, the IDB Group has been an in­stru­men­tal source of mul­ti­lat­er­al fi­nanc­ing for the re­gion. This elec­tion comes at a time when we are grap­pling to man­age with the ef­fects of cli­mate change, lim­it­ed fis­cal space, es­ca­lat­ing debt to GDP, ris­ing in­ter­est rates, frag­ile in­fra­struc­ture and ris­ing pover­ty.

“We need the bank’s sup­port now more than at any time in his­to­ry,” Beck­les said in her nom­i­na­tion state­ment, adding that gov­er­nors must con­tin­ue the clar­i­on call for di­ver­si­ty, eq­ui­ty, and in­clu­sion in this in­sti­tu­tion.

And the strongest voice, she added, must al­ways be for rep­re­sen­ta­tion at all lev­els of the bank, not­ing that the elec­tion of a new pres­i­dent pro­vides an op­por­tune mo­ment to con­sti­tute an ex­ec­u­tive that would re­flect the di­ver­si­ty of Latin Amer­i­ca and Caribbean.

Over the years the IDB has al­so been in­stru­men­tal in as­sist­ing this coun­try with its de­vel­op­men­tal agen­da.

To­tal loan ap­proval to date to T&T is US$520.50 mil­lion the IDB said in a re­sponse to the Busi­ness Guardian, not­ing it cur­rent­ly has loan op­er­a­tions in six sec­tor ar­eas.

These are ur­ban de­vel­op­ment and hous­ing, wa­ter and sani­ti­sa­tion, health, re­form,mod­erni­sa­tion of the State, so­cial in­vest­ment and trade.

“The IDB cur­rent­ly works in T&T with­in the 2021 to 2025 coun­try strat­e­gy that aims to sup­port the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the coun­try’s dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion agen­da to achieve more sus­tain­able and in­clu­sive growth—the first pil­lar of the coun­try’s medi­um-and long-term post-pan­dem­ic de­vel­op­ment plan. The new strat­e­gy fo­cus­es on one main area: dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion to sup­port eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tion,” it fur­ther ex­plained.

To date IDB has com­plet­ed 211 projects in this coun­try.

And with­in the Caribbean Coun­tries De­part­ment, the IDB works with six coun­tries—Ja­maica, Ba­hamas, Bar­ba­dos, Suri­name, Guyana and T&T to en­gage in de­vel­op­ment projects with the broad aim of im­prov­ing lives with­in the re­gion.

For­mer Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties and ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor at the IDB Robert Le Hunte who al­so en­dorsed the nom­i­na­tion said the or­gan­i­sa­tion es­ti­mates the re­gion will need more than US$25 bil­lion over the next sev­en years to meet its UN SDG goals.

As such, he said the IDB is a crit­i­cal in­sti­tu­tion to the re­gion as there is lit­tle it could do with­out ac­cess to fi­nanc­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to Le Hunte en­ti­ties at dif­fer­ent times

in their de­vel­op­ment re­quire var­i­ous types of lead­er­ship.

“At this point in the his­to­ry of the IDB, we need a leader who could hit the ground run­ning, a leader who could fa­cil­i­tate trans­for­ma­tion­al change. The re­al­i­ty is in com­plex or­gan­i­sa­tions like the IDB to make mean­ing­ful change, you need to un­der­stand the run­ning and rhythm of the or­gan­i­sa­tion. Jer­ry, our can­di­date, has worked in the bank in the re­gion and there­fore he knows the good things about the bank And he knows the rhythm of the bank,” Le Hunte said.

Echo­ing sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments as Beck­les the ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor fur­ther en­dorsed that John­son is al­so pre­pared to make the nec­es­sary changes and add new prod­ucts and fo­cus that the bank needs.

“The truth of the mat­ter is that fo­cus is need­ed im­me­di­ate­ly be­cause the re­gion and by ex­ten­sion the hemi­sphere is present­ly ex­pe­ri­enc­ing chal­lenges that they have nev­er felt be­fore,” Le Hunte said, em­pha­sis­ing there’s a lot of de­vel­op­men­tal and in­fra­struc­tur­al work which is re­quired in the re­gion.

Ac­cord­ing to Le Hunte, the speed of in­vest­ment in­to the re­gion there­fore, needs to be in­creased.

And the in­com­ing pres­i­dent would al­so have to fo­cus on the wider re­gion, Le Hunte said as he al­so not­ed ex­ter­nal fac­tors like the on­go­ing war in the Ukraine and ris­ing in­fla­tion which are al­so im­pact­ing coun­tries.

“All of these are ex­ter­nal shocks that are hap­pen­ing to the re­gion and there are go­ing to be chal­leng­ing times go­ing for­ward. In ad­di­tion, there’s the im­pact of cli­mate change and the truth of the mat­ter is a num­ber of coun­tries in the re­gion are not con­trib­u­tors to the car­bon emis­sion is­sues but they are the ma­jor coun­tries af­fect­ed by cli­mate change,” Le Hunte ex­plained.

He said there’s a need for the IDB to take a “lead­er­ship po­si­tion” on a num­ber of these is­sues af­fect­ing the re­gion, adding that John­son will be the ide­al can­di­date to ad­vance some of those views.

Le Hunte stressed John­son is not on­ly a can­di­date for the Caribbean but al­so has vast ex­per­tise on mat­ters af­fect­ing Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and wider Latin Amer­i­ca.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Le Hunte in­sist­ed the pri­vate sec­tor has a key role.

Le Hunte said be­cause of the lev­el of debt ac­cu­mu­lat­ed by many coun­tries there’s a need for the de­vel­op­ment of the pri­vate sec­tor.

There­fore, in the IDB there’s a pri­vate sec­tor arm-IDB In­vest which can play a greater part in en­abling pri­vate sec­tor com­pa­nies with fi­nan­cial fa­cil­i­ties and in­stru­ment, he added.

“A lot of gov­ern­ments of the re­gion, their debt to GDP lev­els are very high so the pri­vate sec­tor needs to play a greater role. And to play a greater role al­so, the IDB in their suite of prod­ucts pro­vides a lot of tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance, grant fund­ing and loan fund­ing,” Le Hunte added.

Side­bar

Ger­ard Stan­ley John­son is an econ­o­mist from T&T who has ded­i­cat­ed his pro­fes­sion­al ca­reer to ad­vanc­ing so­cial and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment in Latin Amer­i­can and the Caribbean.

Dur­ing four decades he has lived and worked in some of the most chal­leng­ing con­texts, in­clud­ing the pro­tec­tion of the na­tive in­hab­i­tants of the Ama­zon, the tu­mul­tuous in­sti­tu­tion­al de­vel­op­ment of Haiti, pub­lic pri­vate projects in Guyana, the post-con­flict re­con­struc­tion of Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and the his­toric macro­eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­sa­tion pro­gramme in Ja­maica.

With more than 30 years of ex­pe­ri­ence at the IDB, John­son of­fers an ex­pan­sive knowl­edge and un­der­stand­ing of the bank and its mis­sion.