Mottley urges united Caribbean front for fairer development financing

Caribbean nations must unite to demand fairer, longer-term, and more affordable financing to build the societies their citizens deserve, Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley told supporters at the Dominica Labour Party’s 70th anniversary rally at the weekend.

Mottley made an impassioned call for Caribbean countries to stand together and push for better financing options to support development for their people. She warned that existing debt structures for small island developing states are unsustainable for building the societies’ citizens deserve.

She told the party rally that the region must come together to tackle global challenges and secure better terms to fund infrastructure such as schools, hospitals, clinics and water systems.

Mottley said: “We cannot build schools and hospitals, clinics, and water reservoirs with 10-year money and 15-year money. It is too short. When you go to borrow for a house, you look to borrow for 20 years and 25 years because you need the time stretched out to pay back for the house—the government is no different. What it means is that there are some things that we must do together.”

“If the government is only getting 10-year money overseas, it means that by the time you go out to fix your next set of problems, you are tied up—and choked up with debt.”

The CARICOM chair highlighted the Bridgetown Initiative, which calls for changes to the way climate funding is handled globally.

“You have to stretch it out, and that is what we have been fighting for in the Bridgetown Initiative—that we need longer debt, that we need cheaper debt, because we need to build countries for our people,” she said. “And if we build countries where our people want to stay, nobody is looking to go abroad, nobody is looking to go to the US or UK.”

She also highlighted other issues affecting the Caribbean, such as the climate crisis, inflation, supply chain shocks, and the importance of people-centred leadership. Mottley stressed that only a united region can create the space for policies that support Caribbean people.

“If we can get a little more elbow room to do the things that we need to do, then we can continue to deliver for you… We seek it to make the average person, the workers of our country, better and stronger, so that they can build for their families.”

Leadership and collective responsibility must go hand in hand, she declared.

“We need the leadership at the top,” she told party supporters, “but we need the partnership with ordinary people. Ordinary people must begin to play their part.”

She hailed Dominica’s Prime Minister, Roosevelt Skerrit, for his steady leadership in the face of immense challenges: “He has had to contend with all of the challenges and crises to which I have referred, and he has done it without fanfare, remaining focused and making sure that this country—that others would not have given a chance to—has remained standing.” (LG)