Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley called for greater co­op­er­a­tion be­tween Amer­i­can and Caribbean Banks dur­ing a meet­ing with Caribbean lead­ers and US of­fi­cials in Bar­ba­dos yes­ter­day.

Dr Row­ley made the call while speak­ing at the open­ing of the Round­table Dis­cus­sion on De-Risk­ing and Cor­re­spon­dent Bank­ing at the Lloyd Er­sk­ine San­di­ford Cen­tre in Bridgetown, Bar­ba­dos.

“We be­lieve that there is great progress to be made from do­ing busi­ness with us and the facts will sup­port that, not the fic­tion, not the dis­crim­i­na­tion, not the dis­re­spect. It is pos­si­ble that Caribbean banks can be­come and we must be­come an in­te­gral part of the Amer­i­can bank­ing sys­tem and, by ex­ten­sion, the world glob­al bank­ing sys­tem,” Row­ley said.

“We are neigh­bours to the rich­est most suc­cess­ful econ­o­my in the world and we are, in fact, mak­ing not a re­quest but a de­mand that we be al­lowed to par­tic­i­pate and ben­e­fit from that ac­ci­dent of ge­og­ra­phy and his­to­ry.”

He not­ed that de­ci­sions tak­en out­side of the re­gion saw the Caribbean los­ing the pro­duc­tion of ba­nanas and sug­ar as liveli­hoods and the re­gion was en­cour­aged dai­ly to di­ver­si­fy economies.

Row­ley said one of the ar­eas of suc­cess­ful di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion the re­gion had pur­sued was fi­nan­cial ser­vices. He not­ed a T&T bank is present in Bar­ba­dos and their foot­print had reached as far as Ghana. Row­ley said he learned yes­ter­day that bank al­so ob­tained a ma­jor con­tract in Ghana.

“Our T&T bank in Ghana is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of how fi­nan­cial ser­vices can bring about growth and good process­es for us,” he said.

But Row­ley said it was be­ing said in the bank­ing busi­ness, “En­ter but don’t go too far.”

He added, “But bank­ing is some­thing we can do. We must be al­lowed to do and it rep­re­sents suc­cess­ful di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the economies of the Caribbean.

Row­ley ques­tioned the type of Caribbean economies which would ex­ist if pop­u­la­tions can’t grow ba­nanas or sug­ar, can’t fish, sell cloth­ing or do bank­ing—and what would hap­pen to fam­i­lies.

“That’s a se­cu­ri­ty risk for the US it­self. So there are mu­tu­al in­ter­ests here,” he added.

Row­ley hoped that at the dis­cus­sion’s end, de­ci­sions would be tak­en that “would ben­e­fit all of us.”

The event was co-chaired by the Prime Min­is­ter of Bar­ba­dos Mia Mot­t­ley and US Con­gress­woman Max­ine Wa­ters, chair­woman of the US House Com­mit­tee on Fi­nan­cial Ser­vices.

The Round­table Dis­cus­sion on De-Risk­ing and Cor­re­spon­dent Bank­ing fol­lows a num­ber of en­gage­ments be­tween CARI­COM and Con­gress­woman Wa­ters on the mat­ter since 2019.

Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley met with Wa­ters dur­ing a vis­it to Wash­ing­ton DC in 2019 and held a meet­ing with her in March 2021, dur­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s chair­man­ship of the Con­fer­ence of Heads of Gov­ern­ment of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM).

Both of these meet­ings fo­cused on the is­sue of de-risk­ing and cor­re­spon­dent bank­ing.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia ear­li­er in the day, Row­ley de­scribed yes­ter­day as a busy day of meet­ings in Bar­ba­dos.

He said the meet­ings in­clud­ed “deep, de­tailed dis­cus­sions but very sig­nif­i­cant treat­ment of thorny is­sues.”

“We are mak­ing some progress,” he said.

Row­ley is ex­pect­ed back in the coun­try to­day and said he will up­date the coun­try on the meet­ings in Bar­ba­dos at a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port then.

Mean­while, Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mot­t­ley said that in the Caribbean re­gion, al­though coun­tries do not have the ca­pac­i­ty to dis­tort glob­al fi­nan­cial sys­tems, they are asked to car­ry out the same lev­el of reg­u­la­tion as large coun­tries.

Mot­t­ley said reg­u­la­tions should be ap­pro­pri­ate to risks.

Oth­er CARI­COM Heads of Gov­ern­ment in at­ten­dance in­clud­ed the Prime Min­is­ter of Be­lize Juan An­to­nio “Johny” Briceño; Pre­miere of Cay­man Is­lands Wayne Pan­ton; Prime Min­is­ter of Do­mini­ca Roo­sevelt Sker­rit; Prime Min­is­ter of Grena­da Dr Kei­th Mitchell; Prime Min­is­ter of Guyana Mark Phillips; Prime Min­is­ter of Saint Lu­cia Phillip Pierre and the Pres­i­dent of Suri­name Chan San­tokhi.

Wa­ters has been ac­com­pa­nied by Ohio Con­gress­woman Joyce Beat­ty, Col­orado Con­gress­man Ed Perl­mut­ter, US Rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the US Vir­gin Is­lands, Con­gress­woman Stacey Plas­kett, Texas Con­gress­woman Sylvia Gar­cia and Louisiana Con­gress­man Troy A. Carter.

CLICK FOR MORE NEWS