New CDB boss sets out top priority

Institutions of Barbados and the region need strengthening and this is a top priority of new Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) president Daniel Best.

The Barbadian, who has nearly three decades of experience in infrastructure development, development finance, project management and strategic leadership, identified the institutional weaknesses, which he believes “will worsen”, yesterday at the launch of the bank’s 55th Annual Meeting.

“I just spent the last year and few months working . . . as senior adviser to the Prime Minister of Barbados and that provided me with a first-hand look at the capacity limitations with many of our institutions,” he said at Hilton Barbados Resort.

Caribbean meeting

Building The Future: Resilient Institutions For A Greener, Stronger And Inclusive Caribbean is the theme of the June 9 to 12 meeting being hosted by CDB non-borrowing member Brazil in its capital city Brasilia.

Best said that it was not a mere slogan, stressing during the launch that “strong institutions are needed to drive implementation of critical projects that improve lives and livelihoods. They are needed to facilitate the development of a new dynamic, diverse, internationally competitive private sector.

“There is no path to the realisation of the just energy transition without resilient and innovative institutions. The importance of these institutions is not exclusively linked to these two sectors. They are needed in every aspect of our countries’ development,” he said.

Critical challenges

“The theme for this year’s annual meeting therefore represents our collective ambition and commitment to respond to the critical challenges faced in our people by reimagining how we make our institutions more fit for purpose.”

Responding to a question on the needed institutional reform, Best noted that “in the multilateral financing community, we speak about capacity gaps too often as an almost academic notion, but we have very real challenges with institutions in our Caribbean and it’s not for lack of diligence of the amazing public servants that we have across the Caribbean.

“So I think it is not sufficient for us as multilaterals, us in the [international financial institution]

community, to continue to just speak at press events, for photo ops [and] at conferences about capacity gaps, because the fact is that our institutions are, in fact, struggling, and it will worsen I think, as we can all appreciate, with some of the global developments that we are seeing,” he said.

“So how can regional multilaterals support governments? I think we need to go even further, looking at the skill sets that are there and how we can bolster those skill sets. Looking at, in many cases, even the number of warm bodies that are in some of our institutions. Looking at what are the global best practices. And when we figure that out, how do we go above that?

“We in CDB have a responsibility to our regional institutions to ensure that they are able to respond to the shifting global landscape. So this is why we are particularly pleased speaking about resilient institutions, recognising that it is more than just an academic concept, but an urgent call to action to support the institutions in our region,” he asserted.

Best said during the annual meeting a “unified” CDB would work with its development partners to “craft transformational, long-term solutions, which will shape our ten-year strategic plan and inform how we better serve the people of our region”.

He added the agenda included “addressing the climate crisis, from the scale of the financing needs to the urgency of building resilient communities” and working to “create an ecosystem that fosters a robust, competitive private sector”.

(SC)

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