Prime Minister Perry Christie called on the leaders of countries in the Americas, with influence on the decision-making process of financial lending institutions, to support the institutions’ policy reforms.
According to Christie, the support is necessary because countries that need development financing from the financial lending institutions are often faced with issues of credit worthiness.
During his address at the seventh Summit of the Americas, Christie said countries in the Caribbean region have found that too often the issues of credit worthiness and development needs have been obscured and as a result, financial lending institutions that exist to aid development have fallen short of their missions.
“We commend recent reforms at the IDB (Inter-American Development Bank) to introduce vulnerability assessments into their lending decision-making criteria and welcome recent moves by governments, such as the United States, to reform criteria for aid and financing for energy projects, climate change financing and disaster risk management in the region,” Christie said.
He added that deeper reforms are required across the international financial system in order to institutionalize more fair and equitable decision-making.
The prime minister expressed that decisions on development financing should not be based on a country’s GDP per capita because its measure does not fully account for the real development and governance issues in small and vulnerable developing states.
He explained that The Bahamas has a high GDP capita, but it also has a small population over 26 different islands.
“We therefore have to maintain some 54 airports, 20 of which are international airports, over 100 public health care facilities and more than 150 public schools,” Christie said. “The challenges are enormous.”
Therefore, he asked countries that have considerable influence on the decision-making processes at financial lending institutions to support the necessary policy reforms that should be extended to the IMF and the World Bank.
