Mottley urges CARICOM nations to join Afreximbank trade pact

Prime Minister Mia Mottley has urged CARICOM countries that have not yet signed a trade agreement with the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) to do so before the bank’s president, Professor Benedict Oramah, leaves office.

Four of CARICOM’s 15 members, including Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica, have not joined the partnership, nearly a year after the pan-African multilateral financial institution set up a CARICOM office in Barbados.

Speaking at the Afreximbank’s 31st annual meetings and third AfriCaribbean Trade and Investment Forum (ACTIF2024) on Friday, the last that Oramah is expected to attend in his current position, Mottley said: “I pray that those countries that are not yet signatory to the Afreximbank CARICOM Partnership Agreement will do so before you demit office because you are deserving of that.”

She praised Oramah, who has led the Cairo-based lender for almost a decade, as a “giant” for providing COVID vaccines to the Caribbean “at a time when the region was not receiving assistance from almost anybody else”.

“The Afreximbank was critical in underwriting the therapeutics equipment and the vaccines for those who wanted to use that pool to procure them,” said Mottley who chaired CARICOM during the pandemic. “That a country the size of St Kitts with 38 000 people could access therapeutics and equipment and vaccines at the same price as a country the size of Nigeria, tells us all a story.”

Thanking Oramah on behalf of her country and others in the region, she said: “We’re told that this is going to be the last chance that we get to be with you in this capacity. What you have done is nothing short of remarkable. It was easy for you to come and deal with two or three, but you didn’t stop there. You insisted that you wanted to reach the entire region.

“I am not usually one to quote Latin but if I did, I would say you came, you saw, and you conquered.”

Mottley highlighted the outgoing Afreximbank chief’s role in launching the first ACTIF in Barbados in 2022, which has grown into an annual event.

“You could have done the first one and then the second never happened. But the second then happened in Guyana, and the third has now happened in the Commonwealth of the Bahamas. You are ensuring that this is a part of the institutional framework for investment and trade, building an ecosystem that will be difficult for persons to collapse.

“You are not just an African giant, you are now a Caribbean giant, you are now a global giant,” Mottley told Oramah. “Wherever and whenever the history of this region is written, and the history of Africa is written, there will be a special place of mention for you because you have chosen to defy the expectations of others and to go where others have thought you and no one should go, certainly from the continent or the region.”

Speaking to reporters later, Mottley added that after decades of talking about cooperation with Africa, ACTIF was the first real movement of substantive activity in trading and investment.

Pointing to the trade forum’s growth from about 1 200 to 1 500 delegates in 2022 to approximately 4 000 this time around, she said: “It has not been a one-off sporadic activity and that is due to not only the vision of Professor Oramah but his drive and his commitment.”

Mottley told Oramah, who became Afreximbank’s third president in 2015, that he had made a significant difference to African and Caribbean civilisations.

Referring to his speech at the opening ceremony the day before when he said the Cairo-based Afreximbank’s financial performance continued to climb, the PM said the institution’s increased performance, reach and profit were the results of his vision and action.

Asked later what she hoped of Oramah’s successor, Mottley said simply: “If he follows in his footsteps, there’s nothing greater that we could ask for.” (DP)