Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretary General Edwin Carrington said Monday regional are yet to benefit from a promise made by the G-20 countries to restore credit, jobs and growth in the world economy.
“One of the difficulties we have had is to identify what has been the resource benefit we have received following the G-20 meeting of April 2, where the quantum of resources to the IMF (International Monetary Fund), for example, was significantly increased by some trillion US dollars,” Carrington told reporters in Port of Spain.
The US$1.1 trillion pledged by G-20 leaders includes an allocation of US$750 billion for an emergency resources account at the IMF, which is used to help nations in financial crisis, and US$250 billion for new Special Drawing Rights (SDR), which is used by the IMF to supplement the existing reserves of member countries.
The leaders also agreed to provide at least US$100 billion of additional lending to multilateral development banks and to ensure US$250 billion of support to finance trade. In addition they also agreed to provide additional resources from IMF gold sales to help the world's poorest countries.
Carrington was in Trinidad for talks with officials of the National Secretariat for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) taking place at the end of this month.
He said Caribbean countries understood that the financial assistance to the IMF from the G-20 countries was to be passed on to many developing countries, including those in the region.
However he said so far CARICOM has not seen any significant inflow from the IMF. He expressed concerns about that because some regional states are currently seeking IMF assistance.
“A number of our countries are approaching the IMF for assistance and we want to make sure that the policy adjustments are taking place or have taken place that the resource flows are increasing so that the benefit which was intended from the G-20 meeting would in fact flow to our countries,” Carrington said.
The CARICOM Secretary General also said the region is yet to benefit from a multi-million dollar security package announced by U.S. President Barrack Obama during his visit to Trinidad in April for the
“We raised this matter at a meeting on the 25th of September when we met the Secretary of State, Mrs Clinton, in New York and we drew attention to this,” he said, noting that to date no specific program has been drawn up to utilise the funds.
He said CARICOM discussed the matter about two weeks ago in looking at the budget for the region's security program, which was discussed at the CARICOM summit in July. Carrington said one to meet the budget is "to seek access to those resources and I think that is now being pursued.”
“But it is not yet out of sight,” he added.
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