Report of the seventh meeting of the Caribbean Development Roundtable

Abstract

The seventh meeting of the Caribbean Development Roundtable was co-hosted by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) subregional headquarters for the Caribbean and the Government of Suriname. The premise for this year’s Roundtable considers that while the prospects for the Caribbean to adequately meet its development needs have been seriously constrained, new opportunities have arisen, both international and regional, that may support the subregion’s efforts to find a robust recovery, and to become more resilient. The meeting focused on five interrelated thematic areas: (i) addressing vulnerability, debt and liquidity in the Caribbean; (ii) the multidimensional vulnerability index (MVI) as an effective measure of vulnerability in small middle-income Caribbean countries; (iii) responding to the data and statistical capacity needs of the Caribbean (iv) global partnership for repositioning, recovery and resilience in the Caribbean and (v) economic restructuring and diversification towards deepening the integration of the Caribbean into Latin America and the global economy. With respect to the Caribbean Resilience Fund (CRF), the meeting reiterated their support for the reconceptualized CRF which now focuses on two windows: resilience building/sustainable resilience and debt restructuring and liquidity enhancement. The establishment of such a Fund can contribute significantly to providing the financial resources to finance the critical investments required to reduce the economic, financial, fiscal, and environmental vulnerabilities experienced by Caribbean countries.