In Nas­sau, The Ba­hamas

Pe­ter Christo­pher

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

The Afrex­im­bank has been keen to adopt the Caribbean as Africa’s sixth re­gion, and while ear­ly in­di­ca­tors sug­gest that most of Cari­com is on board, two big names have not signed on as yet.

“Right now there are on­ly two. I think Trinidad and To­ba­go and Ja­maica. The oth­ers signed on. It is my hope that even­tu­al­ly all coun­tries will sign on. There is tremen­dous ben­e­fit. More is bet­ter than less, so from that per­spec­tive I know Trinidad and Ja­maica are crit­i­cal in terms of size and mass,” said Kevin Greenidge, the Gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank of Bar­ba­dos on Fri­day. He was speak­ing on the side­lines of the 31st Afrex­im­bank an­nu­al meet­ing and the Third AfriCaribbean Trade and In­vest­ment Fo­rum (AC­T­IF2024) .

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ab­sence from the Afriex­im­bank/Cari­com agree­ment was ex­plained by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on Thurs­day, as he said the terms sug­gest­ed by the bank for T&T’s buy-in were not favourable, in par­tic­u­lar a de­sire for all bank em­ploy­ees, lo­cal or for­eign, to have tax ex­emp­tions.

Afrex­im­bank ex­ec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent of Glob­al Trade Bank, Haytham El Maay­er­gi, did not clar­i­fy whether this was the stick­ing point when asked about T&T’s ab­sence from the con­fer­ence. He in­stead said ne­go­ti­a­tions were on­go­ing and he was hope­ful T&T would come on board, not­ing the Bank had pre­vi­ous­ly seen its growth from the uni­fied strength of Africa.

“This is the pow­er of us (be­ing) to­geth­er,” he said, “The same way all 52 coun­tries came to­geth­er and be­came part of Afrex­im­bank, we ex­pect this big­ger pic­ture to take in the Caribbean.”

Over the course of the AfriCaribbean Trade and In­vest­ment Fo­rum, there were ap­peals for T&T and Ja­maica to re­con­sid­er.

Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley made the call dur­ing her speech in the morn­ing ses­sion of the fi­nal day of the con­fer­ence.

“It was easy for you to come and deal with two or three but you didn’t stop there. You in­sist­ed that you want­ed to reach the en­tire re­gion,” said Mot­t­ley, who high­light­ed the bank’s cru­cial aid to St Kitts dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, “And I pray that those coun­tries that are not yet sig­na­to­ry to the Afrex­im­bank/Cari­com agree­ment will do so be­fore you (Afrex­im­bank Pres­i­dent Bene­dict Oramah) demit of­fice be­cause you are de­serv­ing of that.”

Ac­cord­ing to Greenidge, the bank has not just talked, but it has walked its talk with sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ment.

“This is the third AfriCaribbean In­vest­ment Trade Show. The first was in Bar­ba­dos, the sec­ond was in Guyana and we are here in The Ba­hamas for the third. It is im­por­tant to bring to­geth­er po­ten­tial in­vestors from both sides,” said Soomer.

“There have been many deals signed and bro­kered that would ben­e­fit not on­ly the Caribbean but Africa (as well). The Afrex­im­bank has been play­ing a cru­cial role in the en­tire process. It’s be­cause of the Afrex­im­bank that we are hav­ing this trade show,” he added.

CEO of In­vest Bar­ba­dos Kaye Greenidge al­so felt the bank’s ac­tion would even­tu­al­ly win over the ab­sent Cari­com states.

“What I can say to them is a word of en­cour­age­ment, as you con­tin­ue to see the progress that has been made over the last two years and of course the de­vel­op­ment that is hap­pen­ing in the coun­tries that have been tak­ing ad­van­tage of what the Afrex­im­bank Bank has to of­fer we can hope that this will en­cour­age the re­main­ing coun­tries to sign on to par­tic­i­pate as we look to build glob­al Africa,” Kaye Greenidge said.

She hailed the sig­nif­i­cant im­pact the bank has had since mak­ing en­gag­ing the Caribbean in 2021.

“Sig­nif­i­cant progress and very quick­ly too, you would have known that Afrex­im­bank Bank has ap­proved a set of funds for the Caribbean af­ter a num­ber of coun­tries have signed on to the par­tic­i­pa­tion agree­ment and since then we have seen a num­ber of fa­cil­i­ties be­ing dis­persed and a num­ber of sup­port be­ing giv­en. Things like the Kens­ing­ton Oval in Bar­ba­dos and we saw sign­ing that took place here,” said Greenidge.