CDB: Don’t risk access to funding

The head of the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) says there are large sums of money to be accessed by governments to recover from various shocks, but he warned that such financing also “presented opportunities for corruption”.

CDB President, Dr. Hyginus Gene Leon, made the assertion as he addressed the bank’s second annual Caribbean Conference on Corruption, Compliance, and Cybercrime, which is being held virtually over two days this week.

He urged regional governments to put in place strong accountability and compliance mechanisms to ensure that corruption does not result in limited access to climate finance from multilateral and private sources, given the Caribbean’s vulnerability to the effects of climate change.

Speaking on the first day of the conference, Leon said: “As is the case with most small island developing states, the need for climate finance and favourable access conditions is a matter of life and death for Caribbean countries.

“However, the sizeable financing required to address infrastructural and economic vulnerabilities and to recover from shocks may also present opportunities for corruption.

“At all costs, access to affordable climate financing must be protected from mal-administration and corruption.”

Leon, a St Lucian economist who took office earlier this year at the Barbadosheadquartered regional bank, added: “Given the immense need throughout the region, our member countries cannot risk any form of sanction that could limit their access to these resources.

“We, therefore, urge our BMCs to be vigilant and to put in place strong monitoring, compliance, and accountability frameworks to not only secure climate financing, but to facilitate timely implementation of climate change interventions for the benefit of the peoples of our region.”

The CDB president cautioned that the issue of corruption was a worry for the bank as the institution was seeking to mobilise affordable climate finance for its Borrowing Member Countries.

According to Dr Leon, strong governance systems represented an important requirement for the region’s sustainable development agenda to be successful. Furthermore, the CDB president drew attention to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, which stressed that the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals could be derailed by various forms of corruption.

In a release yesterday from the CDB, Leon cited research from the International Monetary Fund, which estimated the global cost of bribery was equivalent to a total economic loss of approximately two per cent of global gross domestic product per year.

The CDB head added: “Weak governance, therefore, places our economies and societies in peril; and CDB’s anti‐corruption outreach is yet another means through which we can support sustained and resilient economic development in our region.” (IMC1)