St. Lucia All Set for Biggest Ever CDB Annual Meeting

Contact: John Emmanuel

Monday, May 21, 2001 - Regional delegates and international observers continue to converge on the island as preparations continue full swing for the hosting of the 31^st Annual Meeting of the Board of Governors of the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB). The May 23 and 24 meeting, carded for the Hyatt Regency Hotel, will be held under the Chairmanship of Prime Minister Hon. Dr. Kenny Anthony, the current chairman of the Board of Governors.  

Bank officials say judging from registration figures thus far, the 31^St Annual Meeting is expected to attract record attendance. More than 250 delegates from the region as well as international observers from as far as China and Japan have registered for the meeting, the preliminary sessions of which have begun.

On Monday delegates deliberated on issues such as loan approvals to countries, requests for technical assistance and the annual meeting of the Special Development Fund. The Fund serves as a principal source of concessionary financing, from which the CDB makes long terms loans, many of them as long as thirty-five years with a 10-year grace period and an average interest rate of 2.5%.

On Tuesday delegates meet again for the Negotiation Meeting of the Special Development Fund. That meeting is in an effort to mobilize support from a number of present and potential contributors, to raise resources for the next four years to fund the Special Development Fund activities of the bank

Vice President-Corporate Services and Acting Bank Secretary Neville Grainger says the partnership between the CDB and St. Lucia has been a promising one, with the future looking even brighter. “CDB has been first of all, not only a source of financial assistance to St. Lucia, in fact I believe from its inception the CDB has made loans totalling almost 200 million dollars to St. Lucia. In addition to that we provide macro economic advice, where our economists visit St. Lucia and we exchange ideas with officials of the government on macro-economic issues. Those ideas are sometimes incorporated within government’s planning framework,” said Grainger. 

St. Lucia he says has done extremely well. “…St. Lucia has had a number of loans recently from the bank, some very large loans and certainly for us to grant loans of that magnitude the Board of Directors would have had to be satisfied that St. Lucia was in a position to absorb these resources,” Grainger said.

The officially opening of the meeting will be held on Wednesday, May 23, from 9:30 a.m.

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